How do you hear poems in your head? In a voice, or as silent words? A variety of women’s readings of this poem, from serious to torch song to taunting, lent a lot of fun in a few short minutes.
Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote the following sonnet as part of a larger set, “Renascence” which was written when she was 20 (if I understand her biography) and published when she was 25.
Sonnet V
If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again—
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man—who happened to be you—
At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
I should not cry aloud—I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place—
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face,
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.
The reading below is a little thin and more world-weary than how I imagine the poem. A good start for contrast.
I’ll link to the torch song version here, but want to make sure you watch the following informal recital below, which I thought was charming. It gets to the playfulness and blitheness the poem brings to my mind. Maybe 1/3 the first reading and 2/3 this reading:
