{"id":184,"date":"2018-10-25T13:42:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T13:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/25\/a-poem-for-thursday-3\/"},"modified":"2020-10-26T23:03:14","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T23:03:14","slug":"a-poem-for-thursday-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/25\/a-poem-for-thursday-3\/","title":{"rendered":"A Poem for a Thursday #3"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

When I was a child there was a fat, blue volume of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry on our bookshelves. I would dip in and out of it, caught by the language and the rhythm. I did not always care (and still don’t) about exactly what the poems meant but she made words into music and that I loved. Millay wrote a huge amount of poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. I have a biography of her on my shelves somewhere that I should read soon.\u00a0 I was tempted to use a favorite poem of hers that I memorized as a child but I am saving that for another day. I also was tempted to use a very sad poem of hers that I read three times in a row when I just came across it but that is for another day as well. For today, we have a poem about love- a stereotypical topic but not a stereotypical poem.<\/p>\n

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink<\/i>
\nNor slumber nor a roof against the rain;<\/i>
\nNor yet a floating spar to men that sink<\/i>
\nAnd rise and sink and rise and sink again;<\/i>
\nLove can not fill the thickened lung with breath,<\/i>
\nNor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;<\/i>
\nYet many a man is making friends with death<\/i>
\nEven as I speak, for lack of love alone.<\/i>
\nIt well may be that in a difficult hour,<\/i>
\nPinned down by pain and moaning for release,<\/i>
\nOr nagged by want past resolution’s power,<\/i>
\nI might be driven to sell your love for peace,<\/i>
\nOr trade the memory of this night for food.<\/i>
\nIt well may be. I do not think I would.<\/i><\/p>\n

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)
\nEdna St. Vincent Millay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a child there was a fat, blue volume of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry on our bookshelves. I would dip in and out of it, caught by the language and the rhythm. I did not always care (and still don’t) about exactly what the poems meant but she made words into music and that I loved. Millay wrote a huge amount of poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. I have a biography of her on my shelves somewhere that I should read soon.\u00a0 I was tempted to use a favorite poem of hers that I memorized as a child but I am saving that for another day. I also was tempted to use a very sad poem of hers that I read three times in a row when I just came across it but that is for another day as well. For today, we have a poem about love- a stereotypical topic but not a stereotypical poem. Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would. Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX) Edna St. Vincent Millay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poem-for-a-thursday"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2647,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/2647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}