Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Was Edna St. Vincent Millay Writing about a Booty Call or is this just a more elegant "Bye Felicia"?

I'm warming up for poetry month (April is the cruelest month) and can't help wondering if this tidy gem was a lyrical description of a booty call, a "Bye Felicia", or was Edna just a player.  As poems goes, it is a delight with magnificent first and last lines.

I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the need and notions of my kind
And urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair and feel a certain zest
To bear you body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed,
Think not for this, however the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity,--let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
for conversation when we meet again.