CCEA GCSE English Lit - Poem Analysis Notes: 'What Lips My Lips Have Kissed'

Analysing "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why"

This poem hits differently because it's not about unrequited love - it's about something far more unsettling. The speaker has forgotten her past lovers entirely, remembering only fragments like disembodied lips and arms.

Millay uses synecdoche (referring to people by body parts) to show emotional detachment. The alliteration of "what, where, why" forces you to slow down and feel the speaker's desperate searching through empty memories. Notice how the caesura after "forgotten" creates a harsh, abrupt ending that mirrors her emotional state.

The metaphor comparing rain to ghosts is brilliant - these spectral memories tap on the glass, symbolising the barrier between the speaker and her past. The polysyndeton (repeated "and") slows the reading down, making you feel the weight of everything she's lost.

Key insight: The poem's power comes from what's missing rather than what's there - absence becomes the main character.

The octave establishes the problem whilst the sestet traditionally should offer resolution. Instead, Millay subverts this expectation entirely. The tree metaphor shows her emotional state: once full of singing birds (lovers), now silent and bare in winter (loneliness).

Context and Literary Techniques

Published in 1920 during the women's rights movement, this poem was revolutionary. Millay won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, and her work challenged traditional gender roles in poetry - particularly the male-dominated Italian sonnet tradition.

The timing matters hugely. The 19th Amendment granted American women voting rights in 1920, the same year this appeared in Vanity Fair. Millay was part of a generation rewriting the rules about women's sexuality and emotional expression.

Form-wise, she follows the Petrarchan sonnet structure perfectly - 14 lines, octave presenting the problem, sestet offering resolution. The rhyme scheme (ABBAABBA CDEDCE) never wavers, making her thematic rebellion even more striking.

Remember: Traditional sonnets celebrated love; Millay questions whether loving at all was worth the inevitable loss.

The iambic pentameter mimics natural speech rhythms, with only line 9 breaking the pattern to signal the crucial tonal shift. This technical mastery makes her emotional honesty even more powerful.

Key themes include memory loss, the passage of time, and female sexual agency. Unlike male poets writing about conquests, Millay writes about forgetting - a uniquely vulnerable perspective that challenged literary conventions of her era.