Edna Millay, in her poem “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,” describes her forlorn love life with men whom she cannot remember and her yearning for love and attention from the men in her life. Millay develops the theme by first stating that she does not remember whom she has kissed and why she has kissed them or why she was with them in the first place; second, by revealing that her past “unremembered” lovers will not call to her in the night; lastly, by blatantly stating “I cannot say what loves have come and gone,” she once again acknowledges that she cannot remember the blurred faces of the men she has been with in her cloudy past. The structure of the poem can be classified as a time of the author attempting to reminisce
