Fatal Interview: Sonnets

Much of the poetry I have been reading in the last several months has been late 20th century or later, with its freer form of writing. I discovered this volume of Millay while searching for something else on my shelves and decided to read it since it had been years since I have any of her works and she is a favorite of mine. I really enjoyed these Shakespearian style sonnets, with the discipline imposed by the mandatory rhyme scheme and set pattern of three quatrains and a final couplet. In almost all of the sonnets Millay’s handling of the form was outstanding. I found that by reading each sonnet twice—once to myself to get the shape and syntax and then aloud to hear the poetry-- greatly enhanced my enjoyment of these beautiful and show more haunting poems. The layout of the book also added to that pleasure as each sonnet was allotted its own page of a heavy weight paper with a woven texture that made each poem stand out on its own.

Opposite the title page Millay gives us the origin of the title of this work:

“By our first strange and fatal interview,
By all desires which thereof did ensue” John Donne

A cycle of fifty-two (LII) sonnets, Fatal Interview lets us glimpse the progress of a passionate illicit love affair from the point of view of the woman. We experience the ecstasy of the beginning, the gradual dawning of realization that she loves much more deeply than he, and then the waning of the affair. The order of the sonnets lets us see the confusion and mixed emotions of the narrator as the affair progresses, her doubts and well as her utter devotion. About half way through the cycle I suddenly thought that this is a perfect introduction to the novel I plan to start reading next month, Anna Karenina! Below is the sonnet that triggered that thought:

XXII

Now by this moon, before this moon shall wane
I shall be dead or I shall be with you!
No moral concept can outweigh the pain
Past rack and wheel this absence puts me through;
Faith, honour, pride, endurance, what the tongues
Of tedious men will say, or what the law—
For which of these do I fill up my lungs
With brine and fire at every breath I draw?
Time, and to spare, for patience by and by,
Time to be cold and time to sleep alone;
Let me no more until the hour I die
Defraud my innocent senses of their own.
Before this moon shall darken, say of me:
She’s in her grave, or where she wants to be. show less