Top Ten Poems of the 20th century- Edna St. Vincent Millay

I have been curious about Edna Millay- in Looking for Alaska, a longtime favorite of mine, she is mentioned as one of the character's favorite writers. I decided to sort through some of her poems to see what I liked for this assignment.

1. Afternoon on a Hill

I will be the gladdest thing
   Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
   And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
   With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
   And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
   Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
   And then start down! 

2. City Trees

The trees along this city street,
Save for the traffic and the trains,
Would make a sound as thin and sweet
As trees in country lanes.

And people standing in their shade
Out of a shower, undoubtedly
Would hear such music as is made
Upon a country tree.

Oh, little leaves that are so dumb
Against the shrieking city air,
I watch you when the wind has come,—
I know what sound is there. 

3. 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 wtih pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again. 

4. Kin to Sorrow

Am I kin to Sorrow,
That so oft
Falls the knocker of my door——
Neither loud nor soft,
But as long accustomed,
Under Sorrow's hand?
Marigolds around the step
And rosemary stand,
And then comes Sorrow—
And what does Sorrow care
For the rosemary
Or the marigolds there?
Am I kin to Sorrow?
Are we kin?
That so oft upon my door—
Oh, come in! 

5. And do you Think that Love Itself
And do you think that love itself,
Living in such an ugly house,
Can prosper long?
We meet and part;
Our talk is all of heres and nows,
Our conduct likewise; in no act
Is any future, any past;
Under our sly, unspoken pact,
I KNOW with whom I saw you last,
But I say nothing; and you know
At six-fifteen to whom I go— 
Can even love be treated so?

I KNOW, but I do not insist,
Having stealth and tact, thought not enough,
What hour your eye is on your wrist.

No wild appeal, no mild rebuff
Deflates the hour, leaves the wine flat— 

Yet if YOU drop the picked-up book
To intercept my clockward look— 
Tell me, can love go on like that?

Even the bored, insulted heart,
That signed so long and tight a lease,
Can BREAK it CONTRACT, slump in peace. 

6. Counting-OUt Rhyme

Silver bark of beech, and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.

Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Colour seen in leaf of apple,
Bark of popple.

Wood of popple pale as moonbeam,
Wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam,
Wood of hornbeam.

Silver bark of beech, and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
Twig of willow. 

7 And you mus die, beloved dust

And you as well must die, belovèd dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fell,this wonder fled,
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were,
Or how belovèd above all else that dies. 

8 Ashes of Life

Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will,—and would that night were
here!
But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again!—with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through,—
There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me,—and the neighbors knock and
borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,—
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
There's this little street and this little house. 

9. When the Year Grows Old
I cannot but remember 
   When the year grows old -- 
October -- November -- 
   How she disliked the cold! 

She used to watch the swallows 
   Go down across the sky, 
And turn from the window 
   With a little sharp sigh. 

And often when the brown leaves 
   Were brittle on the ground, 
And the wind in the chimney 
   Made a melancholy sound, 

She had a look about her 
   That I wish I could forget -- 
The look of a scared thing 
   Sitting in a net! 

Oh, beautiful at nightfall 
   The soft spitting snow! 
And beautiful the bare boughs 
   Rubbing to and fro! 

But the roaring of the fire, 
   And the warmth of fur, 
And the boiling of the kettle 
   Were beautiful to her! 

I cannot but remember 
   When the year grows old -- 
October -- November -- 
   How she disliked the cold! 


10. Being Young and Green

Being Young and Green, I said in love's despite:
Never in the world will I to living wight
Give over, air my mind
To anyone,
Hang out its ancient secrets in the strong wind
To be shredded and faded—

Oh, me, invaded
And sacked by the wind and the sun! 

art fair

I know this isn't the answer Mr. Rehak was looking for, but when we were assigned to go to the art fair, find a piece we liked, and blog about what it meant to us, I snapped a picture of a random piece and went to go buy a smoothie.

This piece is called "Die," and it's by Tiffany Liu. it was hanging with a bunch of other drawings of hands being transformed into other things by the guitar room. I chose it because I liked the color scheme, and I was really thirsty and needed to catch up with my friend Sheila. (Thanks to Zach for taking this picture for me because it was too high on the wall.)

The art fair is one of my favorite events that our school does (I rank it third behind the carnival and the taste) and part of what makes it so interesting and fun to me isn't the viewing of the art itself. it's the moment where my friend will grab my arm and say- "look at what I made!" and tell me why they made it while we munch popcorn and debate what colors to get streaked in our hair. When the art brings together an interaction of people.

Thanks for letting us hang out, Me. Rehak.

(also included is a picture of the matching face paint Evelyn and I got after Eleanor showed us and screamed about the piece her crush made and how it just perfectly displays how perfect he is or something)

Tavi TED talk

For anyone who wasn't sitting within five feet of me when we watched Tavi's TED talk, I am a huge fan of her and her work and her writing and her style and her face and her life. I am also a huge feminist. I wasn't born this pway- my parents didn't teach me to think like this. My feminism grew from kind of waking up and looking around and seeing the inequality I face.

Last Christmas, my mom gave me Rookie Yearbook One, which is the physical manifestation of rookiemag.com, the website Tavi founded and mentioned in her talk. After reading it approximately forty eight thousand six hundred and ninety-two times, and browsing the site for about forty million eighty six thousand three hundred and seventy nine years, I made a short shopping list/ new year's resolution list for myself: (WARNING: vaguely corny. I did not think I would ever post them to a blog for english class)

if you look, every item was a change to my person style that I'd always wanted to try, but had been held back by- shyness? fear of not looking exactly how I wanted to? Whatever it was- I think rookie succeeded in their goal of trying to get girls to question themselves and to give themselves the answers, and to go after what it is they wanted.

The Bear, by William Faulkner

The Bear is an intriguing coming-of-age story, as they say, about a boy who comes face to face with a wild bear. Now, this isn't any old bear- it's Old Ben, a bear who got his foot stuck in a trap but still seems to remain impervious to bullets. The boy has been hearing of this bear all of his life, a bear so huge that all hunting dogs are afraid to go after it, and seemingly cannot be killed. An older boy called Sam teaches our protagonist what is known about the bear, and he learned the way of the land around him. When he was about fourteen he found a small but brave dog who he thought would be able to help him take down the bear. He found the bear- but at the last  minute found he had to save the dog instead of killing the bear.

This was the moment he became grown, I think. He made a decision, and his decision was not to kill and to be renowned by his parents and peers, but to choose life, the life of the defenseless dog and the life of the bear. Like in Sophistication, our protagonist realized something, though (again, like Sophistication,) he was unable to word it or understand it very clearly. I think this moment was probably a seminal moment for the boy, that set him on a life's path and a different way of thinking than those around him. I think that is how he became a man.

Sophistication by Sherwood Anderson

Like Winter Dreams, Sophistication follows a young man in love with a girl. This time his name is George Willard, her Helen White. She is quite rich, and is being pursued by an older, so-called "scholarly" man who she thinks little of. Our story is set at the county fair in late fall, where our characters are walking separately, but each thinking of the other, and a night years ago when they walked together. They both thought they acted foolishly that night, and wanted to see the other and let them know of their change in nature.

Also like Winter Dreams, these characters have not seen each other for some time, but still think of each other fondly. While it seems that they dreamed of each other, their dreams ended up coming true, unlike poor Dexter Green. George and Helen eventually find each other at the fair and are able to walk and talk quietly, and they seem to understand each other. "I have come to this lonely place and here is another" is what George uses as the only way to describe what happend to them.

In addition to being a love story, Sophistication is supposed to be what is called a "coming of age story," where the character learns something that transitions him/her from childhood to being an adult. I find it very interesting the loss of words George seemed to be at, and I think that is the author's attempt to say "this is what I think it is, but you must find it for yourself."

Winter Dreams by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Winter Dreams is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published three years before his well-known work The Great Gatsby was. It is about a young man named Dexter who falls for a rich girl, or as we come to see throughout the piece, the idea of her more than the girl herself. The story follows its protagonist from meeting Judy Jones at the young ages of fourteen and eleven, respectively. He is immediately taken by her, but their relationship does not begin until may years later when he has acquired some money and some business, and is playing golf with some colleagues  He sees her again and, again, is instantly taken. After several years of cat-and-mouse with her and her several other boyfriends, he becomes engaged to another girl. When she hears about it, she comes to see him again, influencing his decision to break up with his fiance. Soon after he is sent to war, and arrives home to find her married.

The main theme of this story is about Dexter falsely imagining Judy Jones into something she isn't, and falling in love with the idea he created of her. He poured everything he thought a woman should be into this girl, and convinced himself he was more in love than he was. When he first goes to her house for dinner, the narration mentions his disappointment that "she had not put on something more elaborate" and that she did not have a butler to call them to dinner. He first saw her when he was a middle class young boy, and for a lot of his life funneled his dreams- whatever they may be- dreams of being rich and powerful and having a beautiful woman by his side- into the idea of a woman to have and to get and to "win-" he wanted to win her over, and he wanted to win his dreams.