“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
