page_title: Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat nor Drink
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat nor Drink / Background
caption_attribution_description: en:Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)Portrait of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1933-01-14)
context_page_description: Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat nor Drink is a 1931 poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, written during the Great Depression.
  The poem was included in her collection Fatal Interview, a sequence of 52 sonnets, appearing alongside other sonnets such as "I dreamed I moved among the Elysian fields," and "Love me no more, now let the god depart," rejoicing in romantic language and vulnerability. These sonnets depict the love affair from a woman's perspective which chronicles her first attraction, consummation, and sorrow at breaking up. Many of the poems make generous use of imagery in Renaissance love sonnets, and uses a medieval setting in some to complement these references.
  The rhyme scheme in Love Is Not All follows that of a Shakespearean sonnet, however, the division of lines indicate a Petrarchan sonnet. It strays away from the extravagant prose of her other poems and instead adopts a more simplistic word choice. The poem begins with an octave where the speaker states that love does not possess the power to heal or save things, and concludes with a sestet of the speaker saying that even though she may face hardships, she would not trade love for food or peace.
context_section_description: Millay married Eugen Boissevain in 1923; however, in 1928 she met George Dillon, the man whom Fatal Interview was written about. Millay took inspiration from the ancient Greek myth of Selene and Endymion, and mirrored their relationship in her sonnets.
  The title 'Fatal Interview' is a reference to Donne's "Elegy 16", and Love Is Not All is a direct response to this elegy, which claims that beauty will not calm the oceans and love will not tame beasts. Millay acknowledges these facts with her own listing of things that love is powerless against, yet disagrees with Donne's personal philosophies and states that while some events might not be moved by love, she would not stop loving even if it meant her life would be made easier.
caption: Edna St. Vincent Millay
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