On Millay’s I WILL put Chaos into fourteen lines
by Meghan Sterling
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.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay
First published in The Atlantic magazine (1946), collected posthumously in Mine the Harvest (1954)
Oh, the Ars Poetica! What poet can resist it? None. And certainly not Edna St. Vincent Millay, a poet well-known for her romanticism, excesses, masterful poetry, and affinity for mayhem.
Here Millay, a frequent flier in the sonnet form, explains what the process of writing the sonnet is for her. Rather than an exercise in wild abandon, it is the deft control of it. Writing a sonnet is organizing the chaos of feeling; it is taming it like a wild beast. The Chaos (capital C) she describes is a Greek mythological concept—both “the absence of order and the potential for creation.”. She dubs it male, the ultimate oppressor, decries it for the way it has tyrannized her (and all women), and relates how she forces it into submission over the course of writing a sonnet. It is quite an elegant, angry, feminist, and passionate description of the sonnet writing process. I would expect no less from Millay.
As a fellow lover and frequent writer of the sonnet, I deeply relate to her metaphor here. Millay struggledstuggled, as many of us do, with her mental health, and with deep, big, and extraordinary longings. What a way to contain them, to force them into the shape of the sonnet! What a way to keep a close eye on things that may spiral out of control, to keep the potential for madness, as we say, on a short leash.
She uses the word “Order” here. To bend Chaos into “the strict confines / Of this sweet Order” and again, “where, in pious rape, / I hold his essence and amorphous shape, / Till he with Order mingles and combines.” It is a wonderful use of the sonnet’s rigid container—to apply pressure as if creating a diamond, to hem in the parts of ourselves, and the world, in this, our one way of exerting control. To become a god, to dominate something at last.
I agree with Millay—writing a sonnet can certainly be an exercise in power. Yes, writing a sonnet, coercing our words and expression into the shape of a particular form, can ultimately be what sets us, and our words, free. And what could be more empowering than that?
Meghan Sterling, author of You Are Here to Break Apart
