"Love is Not All" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
"Measure" by Zarah Khrakhouni
Millay's poem is written as a Shakespearean sonnet. To summarize, it says that love is not everything we need to survive, but man after man takes his life from not having it; the speaker would choose to keep the love if she lacked the other necessities. That kind of love, the kind that matters more than shelter or food, the kind that holds more importance than sleep or water, is worth dying for. "Love is not all.../yet many a man is making friends with death/...for lack of love alone." A possible theme for her poem would be that we all need love in order to truly be able to live.
Khrakhouni's poem looks at love from a more romantic lens. The two loves seem to be having such a naive and innocent conversation, discussing who loves the other more. It's something youngins do. The ending, though, that shift, shows the weight of their love. It's such a mature notion to compare one's love to the light in a lover's eyes. The lovers go about the comparisons with such scientific methods, making the emotional comparison seem that much deeper and honest. By ending the poem with "I was defeated," the speaker has to acknowledge how much he loves his partner and let them win the argument. It's just a beautiful balance that an explanation will not do justice.
These poems look at love as something powerful. For Millay's, it's a life-taker. For Krakhouni's, it's a power source that can't be judged the traditional ways. For both poems, love is priceless.
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