Love is not all - Charlie Grimes

"Love is not all" by Edna St. Vincent proposes a complex understanding of the role that love plays in the speaker's life. The speaker has two basic thoughts about love: 1) Love is not the end-all-be-all. There are, in fact, more fundamental necessities in life, such as "meat, "drink," or a "roof" (representing the basic trio of necessities: food, water, shelter), and greater things that man should be concerned with. 2) The speaker believes that love IS essential in the sense that people who do not experience are "making friends with death," or not experiencing life in the fullest manner possible. Put simply: love is not vital to being alive, but it is vital to truly living. The poem's pro-love sentiment is reinforced by the fact that it is in the form of a traditional sonnet, which often contain subjects of love. The speaker's most powerful message about love is displayed in the ending couplet and aided by the change in rhyme scheme. The speaker ponders whether he would trade love for the basic life necessities mentioned in the beginning sestet of the poem, to which he ultimately says: "I do not think I would." The speaker would not "trade the memory of this night for food," nor would he trade any part of his love life for concrete needs. I tend to agree with this view of love: a constant need for romantic involvement is unnecessary, but when this kind of involvement is occurring, it often makes the true "necessities" of life pale in comparison.