What Lipps My Lips Have Kissed, And Where And Why

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In the poem “What Lips my Lips Have Kissed, and Where and Why”, Edna St. Vincent Millay elucidates that it is possible to feel alone in a relationship, and if a significant other doesn’t mean anything, then forgetting the details of a past romance is inconsequential: regardless of whether a lover is close or distant, a profound emptiness endures. Millay reaches this conclusion by first hinting in the title that the identities of the men are negligible— they all blend together and take a back seat to the woman’s desolation— as she uses synecdoche to refer to her past lovers as “lips” rather than people as a way of dehumanizing them; secondly, through melancholy imagery of ghosts which furthers the idea of an unseen force, or rather feeling, haunting her and beseeching attention, and she cannot be bothered to respond to these pleas, despite the fact that they “stir a quiet pain”, because it would do nothing to ameliorate her aloneness (line 6); and lastly, through the metaphor of a “lonely tree” whose boughs are “more silent than before” because Millay doesn’t specify that the tree was vibrant or prolific during summer or include any distinctive details about the birds: the focus is on the sense of solitude— none of the birds were special, but the woman misses having someone around to help foster the illusion that she isn’t alone, despite the fact that she is emotionally void (9-11).

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