Can someone analyze/interpret this poem please????

"Spring" by Edna St. Vincent Millay.





SPRING





To what purpose, April, do you return again?


Beauty is not enough.


You can no longer quiet me with the redness


Of little leaves opening stickily.


I know what I know.


The sun is hot on my neck as I observe


The spikes of the crocus.


The smell of the earth is good.


It is apparent that there is no death.


But what does that signify?


Not only under ground are the brains of men


Eaten by maggots.


Life in itself


Is nothing,


An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.


It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,


April


Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Can someone analyze/interpret this poem please????
I think it saying "what is the meaning of life". Spring comes over and over again but what is the point. We are going to die anyway so why is all this life starting during spring when it is all going to end.





I think it like that.
Reply:An interpretation I would provide for this poem is that Millay used to enjoy spring, but has experienced a hard time during one spring and now no longer appreciates it. Millay also implies that spring is full of lies because it hides evidence of death underground. As the poem was written in 1921 (post-WWI), it depicts the imagery of the horrors of this war, which was a familiar modernist concern. Altogether Millay could be said to be a bitter being who resents April and Spring, for she seems to think April and Spring represent a fake happiness, with all its bright colors and warmth. This poem really relates to TS Elliot's "Wasteland," and if you read it, it may further your understanding of this poem.
Reply:what I get out of it is that she questions why spring returns again like every thing is new and reborn and beautiful like there isn't any death. it's the same every year that spring comes roaring in with all it's life and beauty like it was the first time. and every year it will pass in to fall and winter but it won't stop it from coming again next year with all it's glory and promises of life. Does that make sense? but hey I could be wrong!
Reply:to me the author was in deep mourning over some kind of tragdedy in her life. She feels awful and the beauty that spring brings in april does nothing for her. I get that she is lost in apathy and depression but deeply she wants to feel the beauty of life but she can't. "i know what i know." Maybe she is mourning her own death, a terminal illness. "it is apparent that there is no death" She drinks a lot and i think the line that say a flight of uncarpeted stairs signifies her being lonley, and the repetitiveness of walking upstairs to bed everynight alone, sad, and drunk...... Thats my interpretation.
Reply:edna st. vincent millay is contrasting the way that every year spring seems to begin again all fresh with the way that people actually get older as the years pass.





when millay says:





It is apparent that there is no death.





she is pointing out that while species can renew themselves indefinitely (little leaves opening stickily ... the spikes of the crocus) individuals die.





millay is also talking specifically about her own feeling that she is aging:





Not only under ground are the brains of men


Eaten by maggots.





millay is resentful that the year is born new again each april, but she is only a year older.





(millay's birthday was in late february - the 22nd - but people with birthdays that fall around spring are often acutely aware of how the year renews itself as they get older).
Reply:My interpretation is that April is the season of rebirth of nature, the blooming of flowers, trees - nature. It looks good, it smells good, and it's alive. But what of the people that were here before? They are dead and buried, and their flesh is rotting underneath this scene of beauty. It doesn't last. The author's life is empty, as she compares it with an empty cup, an unfinished/uncarpeted steps of stairs and she grows old. Soon she will be underneath the ground, but April like an unaware child will still come, oblivious of her passing.
Reply:I like it..





I think it's about hypocrisy. Although things sometimes seem wonderful and beautiful pain and sadness still exist. They are just hidden temporarily by a nice wrapping (Spring). Good and nice things make us forget. They make a mockery of our optimism as the bad things still exist. I don't think crocuses actually have spikes so that could be a false image. It's optimism vs pessimism
Reply:She has always been my favorite poet.





To me it seems she almost always writes of lost love and the reality of life with out it.





She seems to me to fill her works with so many hints of early feminism and slips the knife quietly into some men out of her bitterness, yet she always longs for that missed love. A few personal observations .. Hope they help a little.





In this poem she says .."Not only under ground are the brains of men eaten by maggots. %26lt; above ground also men sometimes lack brains?? %26gt;





She says .. "Beauty is not enough".. " You can not quiet me"%26lt; because she is smart and knows of things ..she is not just beauty and a babbling idiot and wants to be recognized as a female and an intelligent being %26gt;





"April comes like an idiot" %26lt; in feminine form %26gt; "babbling and strewing flowers." %26lt; she resents how superficial and shallow April seems%26lt; aka Beauty, woman, new life%26gt; is.





" Life in itself is nothing... An empty cup" %26lt; without his love?%26gt;





Yet you can't quiet her now %26lt;as a woman%26gt; because she knows what she knows. She is no longer a simple girl..unaware.. she has entered life as an equal to men whose brains are eaten by maggots not only under ground. She can't be quieted and satisfied by just being a pretty little mindless idiot any more.





Sorry this is so disjointed :)