Chaos in Fourteen Lines

“I will put chaos in fourteen lines” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The sonnet is known as the “Odysseus’ bow” of poetic forms. Here is a Petrarchan sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay about the art, the challenge, of this remarkable form:

I will put Chaos into fourteen lines

And keep him there; and let him thence escape

If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape

Flood, fire, and demon—his adroit designs

Will strain to nothing in the strict confines

Of this sweet Order, where in pious rape,

I hold his essence and amorphous shape,

Till he with Order mingles and combines.

Past are the hours, the years, of our duress,

His arrogance, our awful servitude:

I have him. He is nothing more nor less

Than something simple not yet understood;

I shall not even force him to confess;

Or answer. I will only make him good.

For those of you interested in the form and history of the sonnet, I highly recommend the book, The Making of a Sonnet, edited by Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland. It is worth it for their introductions alone.

Peter Nash