(Poem #1739) Three Songs of Shattering - I The first rose on my rose-tree
Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
During sad days when to me
Nothing mattered.
Grief of grief has drained me clean;
Still it seems a pity
No one saw, -- it must have been
Very pretty.
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I was reading through a Dorothy Parker collection, and pondering Millay's influence on her poems, when it occurred to me that we hadn't had a Millay poem in a while. This one came to mind naturally enough, as being very reminscent of Parker's work, and it highlights many of the things I enjoy about both poets - the precision of form and language (and a precision that manages to be flowingly organic rather than sterile), the ability to find startlingly moving metaphors in the most seemingly everyday situations, the mastery of bathos, and above all, the perfectly controlled outpouring of pain and grief beneath the surface of a superficially light poem. Tangentially, the first episode of the US TV show "Desperate Housewives" aired here recently, and I felt that the general tone and content was very reminiscent of Millay's poetry. Did anyone else make that particular connection? martin
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