There’s an idea I’ve been wanting to try for a while now, and National Poetry Month seems like the perfect time. I think it would be cool to take a poem, here on the blog, and go through the process of reading it, interpreting it, studying it, etc. It’s a concept I’ve been calling “Unpack the Poem” in my head–thanks to all of my professors over the years saying, “Can you unpack that?” when they want deeper analysis–but I’ve been hesitant to try it for several reasons. First of all, if it were to become an occasional series I add to my blog topic repertoire (as I hope it will, if there’s enough interest), I’m somewhat limited in my choice of poems. For legal reasons (copyright) I can only “unpack” poems that are in the public domain.
Another thing that’s made me hesitate is the fear of seeming like an authority. So instead of not doing this, because I do love the idea, I’ve decided to just tell you guys: I’m not an authority. I’m not a professor, a scholar, or an established poet. I’m a young poet, a reader, and a pupil of the art. So I would like to go into this little experiment with you all thinking of me not as a teacher giving a lesson, but as a fellow student who’s also figuring things out as I go. Because let’s face it–when it comes to the masters, we are all students.
[Heads up: this is a long post, so I put section headers if you’d like to skip around.]
The Poem
And what better master poet to start with than one of my personal favorites, Edna St. Vincent Millay? I was actually hoping to find another of her poems (a sonnet; “Night is my sister”), but that one doesn’t appear to be in the public domain yet. I did, however, come across this beauty that is quickly becoming a new favorite of mine. The poem is called “Inland.” Here it is untouched for you to read on your own before I skew your perspective with my own thoughts. I also decided to record an audio of myself reading it because the poem is so dang pretty when you hear it out loud.
Inland
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound
Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore,—
What do they long for, as I long for
One salt smell of the sea once more?
People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats at the harbour’s head,
What do they long for, as I long for,—
Starting up in my inland bed,
Beating the narrow walls, and finding
Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning,—
One salt taste of the sea once more?
Okay, now that you’ve read the poem, let’s unpack it! Please keep in mind that these are just my interpretations, my impressions, my way of looking at this. Poetry is subjective, and as I said, I’m not an expert.
Poetic Devices
The first thing any poetry enthusiast does when she sets about analyzing a poem is scan it. Scansion is the act of discovering the metrical pattern of a poem’s lines (the most common one people recognize is good ‘ole iambic pentameter). Unfortunately, I don’t have the space today to give even a basic lesson, so if you don’t already have an understanding of metrics you might just skim this bit. (But don’t scan it; it’s hopelessly prosey. (Yeah I’m that chick who makes bad poetry jokes. Sorry.)) If you’re not up on your meter lingo, don’t sweat it. We’ll jump into some more universal stuff right after this.
For those of you who are curious, I did scan it, and I was a bit surprised by what I found. The poem is definitely metrical–obviously this is no free verse–and there are consistently four feet per line, but the types of feet vary quite a bit. The poem is predominately made up of trochees (“houses inland”), but there’s a fair share of dactyls thrown in (“Beating the”). Depending on how you scan it, there are also some iambs (“the shore”) and even a few truncated trochees (“ground” and “door,” for me).
So what does all that mean in normal speak? Every line of this poem except one begins with a stressed syllable, meaning that the poem as a whole packs a lot of punch. At times it even seems aggressive. You’ll see the exception when I get to enjambment, below, but the takeaway here is that Millay chose a meter that gives the poem a strong, forceful tone.
How about rhyme? The poem is four quatrains (stanzas of four lines each) with a rhyme scheme of ABCB, meaning that only the second and last lines of each stanza rhyme. This makes the poem lyrically pleasing without becoming overbearing or sing-songy. It’s also worth noting that the second and fourth stanzas actually share the same rhyme sound, “ore.” I think that return to the previously used sound–along with the repeated line–gives the poem a nice feeling of closure; when we get to the end we know it’s the end.
Another device employed quite a bit in this poem is that of enjambment. Enjambment is when a sentence or thought doesn’t end neatly at the end of a line (with a comma, semicolon, or period), but rather continues unimpeded into the next line. Because the eye hurries to continue the sentence, enjambment serves to soften the effect of rhyme as well as building momentum in the poem. You can see that Millay even enjambs her first stanza into her second, giving the effect of rushing forward.
Now that we’ve covered some general analysis, let’s get into the really good stuff.
Line by Line
People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
I want to take these first three lines together, because immediately something jumps out at me about them: they repeat. A lot. “People” appears twice, as does “build,” and “house” shows up three times in as many lines! What’s up with that? Perhaps in the hands of an amateur poet we might assume this was sloppy writing, but I feel pretty confident Edna St. Vincent Millay doesn’t do sloppy, so in this case the heavy repetition is a clue to look closer. Why might she be doing it?
For me, the answer is in the subject matter. We’re talking about houses inland. The repetition of houses alone gives me the image of a whole street of houses lined up side by side. And then you throw in “a plot of ground shaped like a house.” Squares, or rectangles, right? A house is rectangular, and so is the lawn. Now I see many square houses on many square lots in many square blocks all lined up. Add the double use of the verb “build” and I’m seeing them pop up like toy houses–a whole neighborhood of cookie-cutter buildings. The impression is monotony bordering on disdain.
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound
Again, we have repetition. But rather than the percussive drudgery of the many houses, we have two long, lovely phrases back to back. The difference in impression, for me, is striking. The stanza has now gone from monotonous to lyrical; it has switched from repetitive in a grating way to repetitive in a melodious way, like waves crashing ashore.
Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore,—
I think it’s worth noting that these are not peaceful images of the sea as beautiful. “Sucking” and “striking” are forceful if not violent verbs, and “hollow” and “tons” both carry negative connotations.
What do they long for, as I long for
Again, any time a (good) poet repeats, it’s for a reason. Here, the double use of “long for” serves as emphasis. It intensifies the feeling of longing.
One salt smell of the sea once more?
Here we reach the crux of the first half of the poem: we see now that the poet longs for one more smell of the sea, which is doubly interesting given her dark description of it just two lines above. The alliteration in this line (the s sounds in salt smell sea once) serves to heighten it, to raise it above everything else that’s come before. We see the importance of it, and the beauty of the wording gives the message even more power–embeds longing in the reader to match the poet’s.
People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats at the harbour’s head,
Now we begin the second half of the poem in a similar structure to the first; people “other” than the poet herself. Again, we get a violent, forceful verb to describe the actions of the sea.
What do they long for, as I long for,—
More repetition, another increase in the intensity of longing.
Starting up in my inland bed,
A very telling line. In the first stanza we felt the poet’s pity-nearing-contempt for people living inland, and here we’re told quite plainly that she is among them. We’re left to wonder if the poet turns that disdain inward. We’re also left to draw the conclusion that the difference between her and these others is that she once lived by the sea and they have not (see the “not awakened” line).
Beating the narrow walls, and finding
Neither a window nor a door,
Another forceful verb, “beating,” continues to increase the intensity of the poem. Then the narrow walls combined with the lack of an exit escalates the square boxes we imagined in the beginning to a level of imprisonment–a claustrophobia-inducing trap.
Screaming to God for death by drowning,—
One salt taste of the sea once more?
Finally, we reach a fever pitch, a shiver-inducing climax. These two lines are explosive. The poet is literally screaming, begging God for death just so she can finally be at her so longed-for ocean. The concept of being willing to drown simply to taste the sea one last time is breathtakingly beautiful–all the more so for how startling it is and unapologetically it’s declared. And of course, the repetition of that last line brings us full-circle, cementing the poet’s desire. The single change in the line from “smell” to “taste” changes the proximity of the sea from “near” to “in,” yet again heightening the intensity of the poet’s message, all the while dragging the poet closer and closer to what she desires.
My Interpretation
So what’s the point of all this analyzing? In my view, it’s not only to enhance my understanding and appreciation of the poem, but to take something away from it. I was instantly drawn to this poem because I have an absolute obsession with the ocean and feeling called by it, and of course I love the dark, moody tone of this piece, but what else can I learn from looking closer? The best way to get something out of a poem is to read it again. Reread it. Read it out loud. Think about it. Come back later and do it again. We miss so much when we just read once and flip the page!
The more obvious meaning I took away here was one of suicide, a poignant longing for death that’s almost hidden in a longing for the sea itself. This interpretation shows itself most strongly (show your work!) in the line where we see that the speaker is “in [her] inland bed,” knowing how much she loathes inland houses, and then of course at the end, where she wants to taste the sea even if it literally kills her. Is the poet using the risk of death to portray how strongly she longs for the ocean, or is she using a love of the ocean to portray a longing for the absolution of death? I think a strong argument could be made either way–and possibly for both at once.
There’s another meaning I get form the poem too, though–a subtler one that I picked up on when I started looking at sentence structure. If you break this poem down grammatically, you’ll see that it’s actually just two sentences long. It’s two questions, actually, with a bunch of clauses and phrases thrown in there to modify things, but the questions divide the poem neatly in half.
If you look closely at the first sentence (the first two stanzas) you’ll see that the first six lines are all describing one thing: “they.” The actual grammatical sentence here is “What do they long for?” (“As I long for…” is another modifying phrase.) And, fascinatingly, if you look at the second two stanzas, the exact same sentence is at the heart: “What do they long for?” again led and followed by more modifiers.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the grammatical heart of the poem is a question, and that it’s repeated (remember my theory that repetition always happens for a reason, often emphasis). It would be easy for us, as readers, to lose that question and take away only the poet’s feelings about living inland versus by the sea, but I think that would be a loss. It is, after all, formed as a question, not a statement. Perhaps the poet asks because she’s baffled and genuinely can’t fathom an answer.
Or perhaps she asks because she wants the reader to come up with their own answer–or to at least ponder the question. What might these “other” people long for, if not the sea? (Love? Family? Fulfillment?) And why doesn’t the poet long for those same things? (Perhaps she feels she’s already lost them? Perhaps she feels they’re out of her reach?) And could that lack contribute to her longing for an impersonal, violent thing? To her suicidal feelings? I think so.
But that’s only my interpretation. As T.S. Eliot said, “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” Maybe you feel something different. Maybe you see something different. (That’s perfectly okay.) Thanks for sticking with me through an unusually long post. I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts, additions, and impressions in the comments!
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