I love (some of) Millay. I don't usually do poetry criticism, though, so I don't know how usefully I can big her up.
I sometimes find sonnets a bit simplistic - I tend to prefer the ones that finish the last three lines rhyming ABCABC rather than with a rhyming couplet. It feels less trite somehow to tie the final six lines together in a coherent thought rather than just have a neat reversal in the last two.
Having the rythm and rhyme schemes obvious from the outset can lead to some really nice twists and enjambment. It's a bit like watching someone wriggle out of a straightjacket - you may be thinking, why did they choose to lock themselves in it in the first place? But you can also admire the skill.
Sonnets which have some kind of driving force to negotiate, rather than just observe or record or mope, might appeal to you more. This one by Drayton - 'Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part' - I like (although I can't find an online version which both has all the words right and is punctuated the way I like). He uses each chunk for something different, a new argument or an extended metaphor. The structure feels more useful or the changes of pace. I forgive him the final couplet's handbreak turn. John Donnes are good for that - he uses the shape of them to set out his argument. 'Batter my heart three person'd God' is punchy, and really dense, and has insanely mixed metaphors.
Specific Millays - the first one below is indeed a bit of a sigh. But it has moments of exuberance about sex which are fantastic.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain,
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
This is just two long sentences draped over the sonnet structure like long coats left on a sofa. The first sentence sentence that concludes 'For unremembered lads that not again/ Will turn to me at midnight with a cry'; the end three lines may be a bit clumsy, but also brilliant ('This really isn't a love poem, it's a poem about missing having some young chaps around and I can't even remember their names, because it's about me and the loss of a particular sense of myself, not about the intrinsic value of a particular chap').
Also, she splits it so that even though she's talking about the past, and it's a negative, she starts the line with 'Will' - is that so that even if it's about loss and bareness and misery you get the whole vision in that line of a cavalcade of midnight chaps? Also, 'not again/Will' feels like an expansion of 'unremembered' - she could have gone for 'forgotten' and 'won't' but it's as though she's bringing home the impossibility or the sense of being haunted by writing out the whole NOT+THE THING.
The line about the tree lets it down, though, for me. Not keen.
Anyway, will think more, but leave this one of hers, which is a bit more tart than most and may provide a squeeze of lemon juice to all the mournful extended sentences.
Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard?–
"What a big book for such a little head!"
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink.
Oh, I shall love you still and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more;
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.
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