by
Poet's Day

This Frenzy

This Frenzy
by
Poet's Day

This week’s poem is a change from the pastoral note of the last two weeks: Edna St. Vincent Millay gives her side of an encounter.

I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892—1950)

Poem 169. I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your 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.

It seems to me that the first eight lines of this poem are a sardonic comment on the man’s assumption of her needs and emotional state (“…am urged by your propinquity to find your person fair”) and the last six are a pretty unequivocal statement of her real feelings for him.

This seems to me to be a glimpse of a real-life encounter, and she is very plain that although she is physically attracted to this man, he can expect no tenderness or affection from her: “Think not…I shall remember you with love, or season my scorn with pity”. The last two lines are perhaps the most cutting: for all the passion she supposes might attend their love-making, she has no impulse to prolong the relationship or even to talk with him should they meet again.

I like this poem because it tells a useful story: we see the encounter and the perceptions of the man and then we see it how she sees it and that the man means nothing to her, no more than the encounter does.

Links