Essay n. 2 “Love is not everything: it is neither flesh nor drink” Love can be described in different ways with different people. Some describe love in a positive way and also in a negative way. In the poem “Love is not all: it is neither flesh nor drink” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, she compared love to nature. Emphasize that love can and cannot do certain things. Edna expresses her feelings about love using repetition, symbolism, and imagery. Immediately when you read the poem “Love is not all: it is neither flesh nor drink,” you notice that the repetition stands out. Edna seemed to think that you can't survive on love alone. Repetition is very good in this poem, especially in lines 2, 3, and 6. “Neither sleep nor shelter against the rain” (Vincent Millay 2). “Nor yet a floating pole for sinking men” (Vincent Millay 3). “Neither cleanse the blood, nor set the broken bone;”(Vincent Millay 6). These three lines repeat the word “nor” five times emphasizing that love cannot measure up to our physical needs. While reading you may wonder why love can't reach the level of our physical needs? For example, someone you love is on life support right now, there is nothing you can do to save them, it has been proven that pictures are mostly what can be touched. For example “Locked in pain and moaning for release” (Vincent Millay 10). These words also confirm an example of auditory imagery, in which Edna shows our readers the desperation of her love life and the suffering one can go through but not exchange love for freedom. Another example of words is “sleep,” “thickened lung,” and “fractured bone.” These words are very disturbing, not sentimental at all. They showed the pain he felt during the bad days of his relationship. In the second verse he then shows that love cannot heal you physically, but emotionally love can drive people to suicide. As you can see, without the images we would not be able to experience Edna's feelings