Commentary on: I will put Chaos into fourteen lines

Commentary on: I will put Chaos into fourteen lines

In I will put Chaos into fourteen lines by Edna St Vincent Millay, the speaker wishes to control chaos and even tries until it is too late and she has been overwhelmed by it. Millay’s use of an extended metaphor and personification convey the meaning of the sonnet which is, chaos and order cannot live without one another.

Edna St Vincent Millay describes her inspiration and her sonnet together through an extended metaphor where she uses chaos to describe her inspiration and order to describe her sonnet. She stages a fierce struggle between both chaos and order, in order to emphasize the extended metaphor. Indeed, she starts her sonnet with: “I will put Chaos into fourteen lines”, which is no coincidence that she says fourteen lines and not thirteen or fifteen lines. A sonnet is composed of only fourteen lines. Right from the beginning, the poet is leading the reader to see and understand her extended metaphor.

Furthermore, Millay says further in the sonnet: “I hold his essence and amorphous shape, Till he with Order mingles and combines.”, which is very significant because first of all “his” refers to Chaos, which is an oxymoron because chaos cannot have an amorphous shape and be contained since chaos itself doesn’t have a shape. This oxymoron reinforces the reader’s idea of chaos being the poet’s inspiration, since it, in a similar fashion, cannot have a shape. Secondly, “Till he with Order mingles and combines” is also very significant due to the implicit mention of Chaos and Order having to work together and even unify and become one thing only. In the optic of her extended metaphor, Edna St Vincent Millay is saying implicitly that chaos and order are going to combine, just like her inspiration and the sonnet are going to combine together. Which already creates this inseparable relation between chaos and order. Since combined, they need one another to exist.

In addition, the poet continues further in the sonnet when she says: “Past are the hours, the years, of our duress,” and “I have him, He is nothing more nor less”. She is saying the hours and years of struggle have gone by and so are now over. She is therefore insinuating that her struggle to put her inspiration or more precisely her thoughts in words on a paper is over. Her battle is over, but we don’t know how it ended, who was the victor, which is why: “I have him, He is nothing more nor less” is very significant in the understanding of the situation. “I have him” can either be interpreted as after years of struggle Order has vanquished Chaos, or by saying I have him, she is saying I am infected by Chaos, which also makes sense since Chaos thrives in order. The second option seems more likely because the meaning of the poem is that chaos and order cannot live without one another which makes sense because the sonnet, cannot become anything without the poet’s inspiration, hence order and chaos being linked.

The Poet’s use of personification is essential to the meaning, as it emphasizes more in depth the relationship between Chaos and Order. Indeed, when she says: “Till he with Order mingles and combines.” She is personifying both chaos and order, already linking them together by being the only things personified in this sonnet, but even more by personifying them just before saying they will mingle

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