"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Edna St. Vincent Millay - Poems, Biography, Documentary, Quotes & Sayings


‘Afternoon on a Hill’: The formal poet who led an informal life



Afternoon On A Hill
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!



To A Young Poet
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Time cannot break the bird's wing from the bird.
Bird and wing together
Go down, one feather.
No thing that ever flew,
Not the lark, not you,
Can die as others do.



The Wood Road
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

If I were to walk this way
Hand in hand with Grief,
I should mark that maple-spray
Coming into leaf.
I should note how the old burrs
Rot upon the ground.
Yes, though Grief should know me hers
While the world goes round,
It could not if truth be said
This was lost on me:
A rock-maple showing red,
Burrs beneath a tree.






Women Have Loved Before As I Love Now
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Women have loved before as I love now;
At least, in lively chronicles of the past-
Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow
Or Trojan waters by a Spartan mast
Much to their cost invaded-here and there,
Hunting the amorous line, skimming the rest,
I find some woman bearing as I bear
Love like a burning city in the breast.
I think however that of all alive
I only in such utter, ancient way
Do suffer love; in me alone survive
The unregenerate passions of a day
When treacherous queens, with death upon the tread,
Heedless and willful, took their knights to bed.



Wraith
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Thin Rain, whom are you haunting,
That you haunt my door?
-Surely it is not I she's wanting;
Someone living here before-
"Nobody's in the house but me:
You may come in if you like and see."
Thin as thread, with exquisite fingers,-
Have you seen her, any of you?-
Grey shawl, and leaning on the wind,
And the garden showing through?
Glimmering eyes,-and silent, mostly,
Sort of a whisper, sort of a purr,
Asking something, asking it over,
If you get a sound from her.-
Ever see her, any of you?-
Strangest thing I've ever known,-
Every night since I moved in,
And I came to be alone.
"Thin Rain, hush with your knocking!
You may not come in!
This is I that you hear rocking;
Nobody's with me, nor has been!"
Curious, how she tried the window,-
Odd, the way she tries the door,-
Wonder just what sort of people
Could have had this house before . . .



When The Year Grows Old
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I cannot but remember
When the year grows old -
October - November -
How she disliked the cold!
She used to watch the swallows
Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
With a little sharp sigh.
And often when the brown leaves
Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
Made a melancholy sound.
She had a look about her
That I wish I could forget -
The look of a scared thing
Sitting in a net!
Oh, beautiful at nightfall
The soft spitting snow!
And beautiful the bare boughs
Rubbing to and fro!
But the roaring of the fire,
And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
Were beautiful to her!
I cannot but remember
When the year grows old -
October - November -
How she disliked the cold!



When I Too Long Have Looked Upon Your Face
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

When I too long have looked upon your face,
Wherein for me a brightness unobscured
Save by the mists of brightness has its place,
And terrible beauty not to be endured,
I turn away reluctant from your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.
Then is my daily life a narrow room
In which a little while, uncertainly,
Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,
Among familiar things grown strange to me
Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,
Till I become accustomed to the dark.



Where Can The Heart Be Hidden In The Ground
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Where can the heart be hidden in the ground
And be at peace, and be at peace forever,
Under the world, untroubled by the sound
Of mortal tears, that cease from pouring never?
Well for the heart, by stern compassion harried,
If death be deeper than the churchmen say, -
Gone from this world indeed what's graveward carried,
And laid to rest indeed what's laid away.
Anguish enough while yet the indignant breather
Have blood to spurt upon the oppressor's hand;
Who would eternal be, and hang in ether
A stuffless ghost above his struggling land,
Retching in vain to render up the groan
That is not there, being aching dust's alone?



Wild Swans
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 
I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more;
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.
Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
House without air, I leave you and lock your door.
Wild swans, come over the town, come over
The town again, trailing your legs and crying!




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The Hero (2017) - Gently They Go Scene (10/10) | Movieclips
Apr 25, 2019

The Hero - Gently They Go: Lee (Sam Elliott) listens as Charlotte (Laura Prepon) reads to him one of her favorite poems.

Dirge Without Music 
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled
Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

---

Edna  St. Vincent Millay, “Dirge Without Music” from Collected Poems © 1928, 1955 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with permission of Elizabeth Barnett and Holly Peppe, Literary Executors, The Millay Society. Source: Collected Poems (HarperCollins, 1958)




Edna St. Vincent Millay reads Love is Not All
Jul 25, 2010



Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making friends with death 
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 
It well may be that in a difficult hour, 
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution's power, 
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 
Or trade the memory of this night for food. 
It well may be. I do not think I would. 

---

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Love is Not All" (Sonnet XXX)," from Collected Poems. Copyright 1931, 1934, 1939, © 1958 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, The Millay Society. www.millay.org.



Edna St Vincent Millay documentary
Aug 4, 2020


Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright.

Encouraged to read the classics at home, she was too rebellious to make a success of formal education, but she won poetry prizes from an early age, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, and went on to use verse as a medium for her feminist activism. She also wrote verse-dramas and a highly-praised opera, The King's Henchman. Her novels appeared under the name Nancy Boyd, and she refused lucrative offers to publish them under her own name.

Burning Candles: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay documentary

2009


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Biography










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Quotes & Sayings by Edna St. Vincent Millay


“They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it. ”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay,

- - -

“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay,

- - -

“Time Does Not Bring Relief"

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay,

- - -

“Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. 

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age. The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“After all, my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay,

- - -

“Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.

Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.

If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.

Should I outlive this anguish, and men do,
I shall have only good to say of you.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“I love humanity but I hate people.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“Love is Not All"

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems

- - -

“You see, I am a poet, and not quite right in the head, darling. It’s only that.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems

- - -

“What should I be
but just what I am?”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay,

- - -

“Night falls fast.
Today is in the past.
Blown from the dark hill hither to my door
Three flakes, then four
Arrive, then many more.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“No one but Night,
with tears on her dark face,
watches beside me
in this windy place.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay,

- - -

“Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen;
depart, be lost, but climb.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“Lost in Hell, - Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee;
Say to her, "My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay,

- - -

“There is no shelter in you anywhere.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“The longest absence is less perilous to love
than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“And what are you that, missing you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,
As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
And looking at the wall?

I know a man that’s a braver man
And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
The one man in my mind?

Yet women’s ways are witless ways,
As any sage will tell,—
And what am I, that I should love
So wisely and so well?”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

- - -

“I shall forget you presently, my dear (Sonnet IV) "

I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And vows were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,—
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

― Edna St. Vincent Millay



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Edna St. Vincent Millay

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Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1933
Edna St. Vincent Millay, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1933
BornFebruary 22, 1892
Rockland, Maine, US
DiedOctober 19, 1950 (aged 58)
Austerlitz, New York, US
Pen nameNancy Boyd
OccupationPoet
NationalityAmerican
Alma materVassar College
Notable awardsPulitzer Prize for Poetry
(1923)
Robert Frost Medal
(1943)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright.

Encouraged to read the classics at home, she was too rebellious to make a success of formal education, but she won poetry prizes from an early age, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, and went on to use verse as a medium for her feminist activism. She also wrote verse-dramas and a highly-praised opera, The King's Henchman. Her novels appeared under the name Nancy Boyd, and she refused lucrative offers to publish them under her own name.

Millay was a prominent social figure of New York City's Greenwich Village just as it was becoming known as a bohemian writer's colony, and she was noted for her uninhibited lifestyle, forming many passing relationships with both men and women. She was also a social and political activist and those relationships included prominent anti-war activists including Floyd Dell, editor of the radical magazine The Masses, and perhaps John Reed. She became a prominent feminist of her time; her poetry and her example, both subversive, inspired a generation of American women.

Her career as a poet was meteoric. In 1923 she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer prize in poetry. She became a performance artist super-star, reading her poetry to rapt audiences across the country. [1]

A road accident in middle-age left her a partial invalid and morphine-dependent for years. Yet near the end of her life, she wrote some of her greatest poetry.

Early life

Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, to Cora Lounella Buzelle, a nurse, and Henry Tolman Millay, a schoolteacher who would later become a superintendent of schools. Her middle name derives from St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, where her uncle's life had been saved just before her birth. The family's house was "between the mountains and the sea where baskets of apples and drying herbs on the porch mingled their scents with those of the neighboring pine woods."[2] In 1904, Cora officially divorced Millay's father for financial irresponsibility and domestic abuse, but they had already been separated for some years. Henry and Edna kept a letter correspondence for many years, but he never re-entered the family. Cora and her three daughters – Edna (who called herself "Vincent"), Norma Lounella (born 1893), and Kathleen Kalloch (born 1896) – moved from town to town, living in poverty and surviving various illnesses. Cora travelled with a trunk full of classic literature, including Shakespeare and Milton, which she read to her children. The family settled in a small house on the property of Cora's aunt in Camden, Maine, where Millay would write the first of the poems that would bring her literary fame.

Edna St. Vincent Millay in Mamaroneck,[3] NY, 1914, by Arnold Genthe.

The three sisters were independent and spoke their minds, which did not always sit well with the authority figures in their lives. Millay's grade school principal, offended by her frank attitudes, refused to call her Vincent. Instead, he called her by any woman's name that started with a V.[4] At Camden High School, Millay began developing her literary talents, starting at the school's literary magazine, The Megunticook. At 14 she won the St. Nicholas Gold Badge for poetry, and by 15, she had published her poetry in the popular children's magazine St. Nicholas, the Camden Herald, and the high-profile anthology Current Literature.

Millay entered Vassar College in 1913 when she was 21 years old, later than usual. Her attendance at Vassar became a strain to her due to its strict nature. Before she attended the college Millay had a liberal home life that included smoking, drinking, playing gin rummy, and flirting with men. Vassar, on the other hand, expected its students to be refined and live according to their status as young ladies.[5] She had relationships with many fellow students during her time there and kept scrapbooks including drafts of plays written during the period.[4][6] While at school, she had several relationships with women, including Edith Wynne Matthison, who would go on to become an actress in silent films.[7]

New York City

Edna St. Vincent Millay's home in 1923–24 at 75+12 Bedford Street, Greenwich Village (2013 photo)

After her graduation from Vassar in 1917, Millay moved to New York City. She lived in a number of places in Greenwich Village, including a house owned by the Cherry Lane Theatre[8] and 75½ Bedford Street, renowned for being the narrowest[9][10] in New York City.[11] While in New York City, Millay lived an openly bisexual lifestyle.[5] The critic Floyd Dell wrote that the red-haired and beautiful Millay was "a frivolous young woman, with a brand-new pair of dancing slippers and a mouth like a valentine."[2] Millay described her life in New York as "very, very poor and very, very merry." While establishing her career as a poet, Millay initially worked with the Provincetown Players on Macdougal Street and the Theatre Guild. In 1924 Millay and others founded the Cherry Lane Theater "to continue the staging of experimental drama."[12] Magazine articles under a pseudonym also helped support her early days in the Village.[2] During her stay in Greenwich Village, Millay learned to use her poetry in her feminist activism. She often went into detail about topics others found taboo, such as a wife leaving her husband in the middle of the night.[5]

Counted among Millay's close friends were the writers Witter BynnerArthur Davison Ficke, and Susan Glaspell, as well as Floyd Dell and the critic Edmund Wilson, both of whom proposed marriage to her and were refused.[7][13] Millay had a way of wrapping men around her finger, even after she rejected them.[5] Edmund Wilson, for example, spoke of her highly because Millay took his virginity but she rejected his advances and his marriage proposal. However, he remained a loyal friend.[5]

Career

Millay's fame began in 1912 when, at the age of 20, she entered her poem "Renascence" in a poetry contest in The Lyric Year. The poem was widely considered the best submission, and when it was ultimately awarded fourth place, it created a scandal which brought Millay publicity. The first-place winner Orrick Johns was among those who felt that "Renascence" was the best poem, and stated that "the award was as much an embarrassment to me as a triumph." A second-prize winner offered Millay his $250 prize money.[14] In the immediate aftermath of the Lyric Year controversy, wealthy arts patron Caroline B. Dow heard Millay reciting her poetry and playing the piano at the Whitehall Inn in Camden, Maine, and was so impressed that she offered to pay for Millay's education at Vassar College.[15]

Millay's 1920 collection A Few Figs From Thistles drew controversy for its exploration of female sexuality and feminism.[16] In 1919, she wrote the anti-war play Aria da Capo, which starred her sister Norma Millay at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York City. Millay won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 for "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver";[17] she was the third woman to win the poetry prize, after Sara Teasdale (1918) and Margaret Widdemer (1919).[18]

Millay also wrote short stories for the magazine Ainslee's - but she was a canny protector of her identity as a poet and an aesthete, and insisted on publishing this more mass-appeal work under a pseudonym, Nancy Boyd. As her fame grew and she became a household name, the publisher of Ainslee's offered to double her fees if he could use her real name. She refused.

In January 1921, she went to Paris, where she met and befriended the sculptors Thelma Wood[19] and Constantin Brancusi, photographer Man Ray, had affairs with journalists George Slocombe and John Carter, and became pregnant by a man named Daubigny. She secured a marriage license but instead returned to New England where her mother Cora helped induce an abortion with alkanet, as recommended in her old copy of ''Culpeper's Complete Herbal''.[20] Possibly as a result, Millay was frequently ill and weak for much of the next four years.

After experiencing his remarkable attentions to her during her illness, in 1923 she married 43-year-old Eugen Jan Boissevain (1880–1949), the widower of the labor lawyer and war correspondent Inez Milholland, a political icon Millay had met during her time at Vassar.[21] A self-proclaimed feminist, Boissevain supported Millay's career and took primary care of domestic responsibilities. Both Millay and Boissevain had other lovers throughout their 26-year marriage. For Millay, one such significant relationship was with the poet George Dillon, a student 14 years her junior, whom she met in 1928 at one of her readings at the University of Chicago. Their relationship inspired the sonnets in the collection Fatal Interview (published 1931).[22]

Main house at Steepletop, where Millay spent the last 25 years of her life

In 1925, Boissevain and Millay bought Steepletop near Austerlitz, New York, which had once been a 635-acre (257 ha) blueberry farm.[23] They built a barn (from a Sears Roebuck kit), and then a writing cabin and a tennis court. Millay grew her own vegetables in a small garden.[23][24] Later, they bought Ragged Island in Casco Bay, Maine, as a summer retreat.[25] Frequently having trouble with the servants they employed, Millay wrote, "The only people I really hate are servants. They are not really human beings at all."[26]

In the summer of 1936, Millay was riding in a station wagon when the door suddenly swung open, and Millay “was hurled out into the pitch-darkness...and rolled for some distance down a rocky gully"[27] The accident severely damaged nerves in her spine, requiring frequent surgeries and hospitalizations, at least daily doses of morphine. Millay lived the rest of her life in "constant pain".[28] Despite this, she was sufficiently alarmed by the rise of fascism to write against it. During World War I, Millay had been a dedicated and active pacifist; however, in 1940 she advocated for the U.S. to enter the war against the Axis and became an ardent supporter of the war effort. She later worked with Writers' War Board to create propaganda, including poetry.[29] Millay's reputation in poetry circles was damaged by her war work. Merle Rubin noted, "She seems to have caught more flak from the literary critics for supporting democracy than Ezra Pound did for championing fascism."[30] In 1942 in The New York Times Magazine, Millay mourned the destruction of the Czechoslovak town of LidiceNazi forces had razed Lidice, slaughtered its male inhabitants and scattered its surviving residents in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. Millay wrote:

The whole world holds in its arms today
The murdered village of Lidice,
Like the murdered body of a little child.[2]

This article would serve as the basis of her 32-page poem, "Murder of Lidice", in 1942[31] and loosely served as the basis of the 1943 MGM movie Hitler's MadmanDouglas Sirk directed the movie. Harper and Brothers published the poem in 1942.[31][32]

In 1943, Millay was the sixth person and the second woman to be awarded the Frost Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry.

Despite the excellent sales of her books in the 1930s, her declining reputation, constant medical bills, and frequent demands from her mentally-ill sister Kathleen meant that for most of her last years, Millay was in debt to her own publisher.[33] Author Daniel Mark Epstein also concludes from her correspondence that Millay developed a passion for thoroughbred horse-racing, and spent much of her income investing in a racing stable of which she had quietly become an owner.[4]

Although her work and reputation declined during the war years, possibly because of a morphine addiction acquired following her accident, she subsequently sought treatment for it and was successfully rehabilitated, with some of her finest work dating from the post-war period. Boissevain died in 1949 of lung cancer, and Millay lived alone for the last year of her life. Her final collection of poems was published posthumously as the volume "Mine the Harvest". The title sonnet recalls her career:

Those hours when happy hours were my estate, —
Entailed, as proper, for the next in line,
Yet mine the harvest, and the title mine —
Those acres, fertile, and the furrows straight,
From which the lark would rise — all of my late
Enchantments, still, in brilliant colours, shine,

[34]

Death and legacy

Edna St. Vincent Millay's (and her husband's) gravestone at Steepletop

Millay died at her home on October 19, 1950. She had fallen down stairs and was found approximately eight hours after her death. Her physician reported that she had suffered a heart attack following a coronary occlusion.[2][35][36] She was 58 years old. She is buried alongside her husband at Steepletop, Austerlitz, New York.[37]

Millay's sister Norma and her husband, the painter and actor Charles Frederick Ellis, moved to Steepletop after Millay's death. In 1973, they established the Millay Colony for the Arts on seven acres near the house and barn. After the death of her husband in 1976, Norma continued to run the program until her death in 1986.[23]

At 17, the poet Mary Oliver visited Steepletop and became a close friend of Norma. Later she lived at Steepletop off-and-on for seven years and helped to organize Millay's papers.[38] Mary Oliver herself went on to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, greatly inspired by Millay's work.[39]

In 2006, the state of New York paid $1.69 million to acquire 230 acres (0.93 km2) of Steepletop, to add the land to a nearby state forest preserve. The proceeds of the sale were used by the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society to restore the farmhouse and grounds and turn it into a museum. The museum opened to the public in the summer of 2010, and guided tours of Steepletop and Millay's gardens were available from the end of May through the middle of October. Effective November 2018 Steepletop closed to the public due to financial challenges and restoration needs. Fundraising efforts continue as do considerations for the future of this museum house.[40] Parts of the grounds of Steepletop, including the Millay Poetry Trail that leads to her grave, are now open for occasional scheduled events.[41]

Conservation of Millay's birthplace began in 2015 with the purchase of the double-house at 198-200 Broadway, Rockland, Maine. Built in 1891, Henry T. and Cora B. Millay were the first tenants of the north side, where Cora gave birth to her first of three daughters during a February 1892 squall.[42] Identified as the Singhi Double House, the home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019 not as the poet's birthplace, but as a "good example" of the "modest double houses" that made up almost 10% of residences in the largely working-class seaside city between 1837 and the early 1900s.[43] When fully restored by 2023, half the house will be dedicated to honoring Millay's legacy with workshops and classes, while the other half will be rented for income to sustain conservation and programs. A writer-in-residence will be funded by the Ellis Beauregard Foundation and the Millay House Rockland.[44]

Millay lived in nearby Camden, Maine, beginning in 1900, where she is also memorialized. A statue of the poet stands in Harbor Park which shares with Mt. Battie the view of Penobscot Bay that opens "Renascence," the poem that launched Millay's career.[45] Camden Public Library also shares Mt. Battie's view. It has the first couplets of "Renascence" inscribed along the perimeter of a large skylight: "All I could see from where I stood / Was three long mountains and a wood; / I turned and looked another way, / And saw three islands in a bay."[46] The library's Walsh History Center collection contains the scrapbooks created by Millay’s high school friend, Corinne Sawyer, as well as photos, letters, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera.[47]

Nancy Milford published a biography of the poet in 2001, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St Vincent Millay. Millay's sister, Norma Millay Ellis (then her only living relative), offered Milford access to the poet's papers based on her successful biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda. Milford also edited and wrote an introduction for a collection of Millay's poems called The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.[48] Milford wrote that "Millay was the first American figure to rival the personal adulation, frenzy even, of Byron, where the poet in his person was the romantic ideal. It was his life as much as his work that shocked and delighted his audiences. Edna Millay was the only American woman to draw such crowds to her. Her performing self made people feel they had seen the muse alive and just within reach."[1]

Millay has been referenced in popular culture, and her work has been the inspiration for music and drama:

  • In the 1971 All in the Family episode "Judging Books by Covers", the character Archie Bunker erroneously refers to the poet as "Edna St. Louis Millay."
  • In 1972 the Poem 'Conscientious Objector' by Edna, was put to music by Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul and Mary) on her album 'Morning Glory'.
  • In the 1975 The Waltons episode "The Woman", a female poet visiting the college attended by John Boy quotes Edna St. Vincent Millay, reciting "The First Fig":
  • "My candle burns at both ends;
  • It will not last the night;
  • But ah, my foes and oh my friends—
  • It gives a lovely light!"
  • In 1978 American composer Ivana Marburger Themmen used Millay's text for her composition for voice and orchestra Shelter This Candle from the Wind.[49]
  • In July 1981, the United States Postal Service issued an 18-cent stamp depicting Edna St. Vincent Millay.[50]
  • In October 2020, Scottish harpist Maeve Gilchrist[51] produced an album entitled The Harpweaver, that owes its origin to a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver".
  • Millay has been the inspiration for several plays and musicals, including the biographical play Words Like Fresh Skin, written by Megan Lohne and produced at Adelphi University.[52]
  • In 2021, Hildegard Publishing released Six Songs on Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Margaret Bonds (1913-1972).[53]
  • In 2015, Millay was named by Equality Forum as one of their "31 Icons" of the 2015 LGBT History Month.[54]

Works

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!

"First Fig"
from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)[55]

Millay wrote six verse dramas early in her career, including Two Slatterns and a King and The Lamp and the Bell, a poem written for Vassar College about love between women.[7] She was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera House to write a libretto for an opera composed by Deems Taylor. The result, The King's Henchman, drew on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's account of Eadgar, King of Wessex, and was described as the most effectively and artistically wrought American opera ever to reach the stage. Within three weeks, her publishers had run through four editions of the book.[2]

Her pacifist verse drama Aria da Capo, a one-act play written for the Provincetown Players, is often anthologized. It aired live as an episode of Academy Theatre in 1949 on NBC.[56]

"Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare" (1922) is an homage to the geometry of Euclid.[57] "Renascence"[58] and "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver"[59] are often considered her finest poems. On her death, The New York Times described her as "an idol of the younger generation during the glorious early days of Greenwich Village [...] One of the greatest American poets of her time."[2] Thomas Hardy said that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.[60] The poet Richard Wilbur asserted, "She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century."[61][62]

Publications

See also

References

  1. Jump up to:a b Milford 2001, p. xiv.
  2. Jump up to:a b c d e f g "Edna St. V. Millay Found Dead At 58"The New York Times(obituary), October 20, 1950, retrieved September 13, 2010.
  3. ^ 1869-1942, Genthe, Arnold (September 24, 2018). "Edna St. Vincent Millay at Mitchell Kennerley's house in Mamaroneck, New York"www.loc.gov.
  4. Jump up to:a b c Epstein 2001.
  5. Jump up to:a b c d e MILLAY, VINCENT (September 5, 2005), "Edna St. Vincent Millay", Lofty Dogmas, University of Arkansas Press, pp. 248–250, doi:10.2307/j.ctvmx3j3j.68ISBN 978-1-61075-244-2
  6. ^ Brinkman, B. "Modern American Archives and Scrapbook Modernism." The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry (2015):
  7. Jump up to:a b c Millay, Edna St. Vincent (February 4, 2014). "Edna St. Vincent Millay"Edna St. Vincent Millay.
  8. ^ Nevius, Michelle and James (2009). Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City. New York: Free Press.
  9. ^ Gray, Christopher (November 10, 1996). "For Rent: 3-Floor House, 9 1/2 Ft. Wide, $6,000 a Month"The New York Times. Retrieved December 14, 2015.
  10. ^ Barbanel, Josh (September 19, 2013). "Grand on a Small Scale"The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 14, 2015.
  11. ^ Wetzsteon, Ross. 2002. Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village, the American Bohemia, 1910-1960. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 283
  12. ^ Delaney, Edmund T. 1968. New York's Greenwich Village. Barre, Mass: Barre Publishers. p. 112
  13. ^ Milford 2001, pp. 191–192.
  14. ^ Dash, Joan (1973). A Life of One's Own: Three Gifted Women and the Men They Married. New York: Harper & Row.
  15. ^ Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 7: Edna St. Vincent Millay"PAL: Perspectives in American Literature – A Research and Reference Guide. CSUSTAN. Retrieved July 2, 2012.
  16. ^ Millay, Edna St. Vincent. A few Figs from Thistles
  17. ^ Millay, Edna St. Vincent, "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver"
  18. ^ "Poetry", Pulitzer, retrieved December 9, 2010.
  19. ^ Herring, Phillip (1995). Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes. New York: Penguin Books. p. 158. ISBN 0-14-017842-2.
  20. ^ Milford 2001, pp. 234–239.
  21. ^ Milford 2001, pp. 268–275.
  22. ^ "Edna St. Vincent Millay". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved June 27, 2013.
  23. Jump up to:a b c "History"Millay Colony for the Arts. Retrieved January 23, 2010.
  24. ^ "The Grounds at Steepletop". Edna St. Vincent Millay Society. 2008. Archived from the original on November 21, 2008. Retrieved January 23,2010.
  25. ^ Milford 2001, pp. 368–371.
  26. ^ Bryson, Bill. At Home, A Short History of Private Life, Random House, 2010, p 111
  27. ^ Letter from Millay to Ferdinand Earle, September 14, 1940. Quoted in Milford 2001, p. 449
  28. ^ Milford 2001, pp. 438–449.
  29. ^ "Edna St. Vincent Millay" Vassar Encyclopaedia, Vassar College
  30. ^ Rubin, Merle (September 6, 2001). "Lyrical, Rebellious And Almost Forgotten"The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 24, 2015.
  31. Jump up to:a b "The Murder of Lidice"Goodreads.
  32. ^ [1] "Ghosts of American Literature: Receiving, Reading, and Interleaving Edna St. Vincent Millay's The Murder of Lidice". PMLA, the journal of the Modern Language Association of America, Volume 133 , Issue 5: Special Topic Cultures of Reading. October 2018 , pp. 1152 - 1171. ISSN: 0030-8129
  33. ^ Milford 2001, p. 442.
  34. ^ Millay, Edna St. Vincent (1954). Millay Ellis, Norma (ed.). Mine the Harvest: A collection of new poems. New York: Harper & Brothers.
  35. ^ Milford 2001, p. 508.
  36. ^ Epstein 2001, p. 273.
  37. ^ Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 32422). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
  38. ^ "The Land and Words of Mary Oliver, the Bard of Provincetown"The New York Times, July 5, 2009, retrieved September 7, 2010.
  39. ^ Poetry Foundation Oliver biography. Accessed September 7, 2010
  40. ^ Cassidy, Benjamin; Eagle, The Berkshire. "The Edna St. Vincent Millay Society: Saving Steepletop"The Berkshire Eagle. Retrieved July 14, 2019.
  41. ^ "Steepletop Trails"www.millay.org. Retrieved January 10, 2020.
  42. ^ "About the Millay House"Millay House Rockland.
  43. ^ Maine Historic Preservation Commission. "Singhi Double House, Knox County, 1891".
  44. ^ "Millay House Rockland launches final phase of fundraising for south side"Pen Bay Pilot. November 24, 2020.
  45. ^ "Statue of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Camden, Maine)"Waymarking.
  46. ^ Millay, Edna St. Vincent (1917). "Renascence"Poetry Foundation.
  47. ^ "Edna St. Vincent Millay Biography"Camden Public Library.
  48. ^ Milford, Nancy (2002). The Selected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-375-76123-3.
  49. ^ Cohen, Aaron I. (1987). International encyclopedia of women composers(Second edition, revised and enlarged ed.). New York. ISBN 0-9617485-2-4OCLC 16714846.
  50. ^ "Edna St. Vincent Millay | Date Issued:1981-07-10 | Postage Value: 18 cents"USStampGallery.com. Retrieved November 10, 2020.
  51. ^ https://www.maevegilchristmusic.com/
  52. ^ "Words like Fresh Skin -"Words like Fresh Skin. Retrieved January 10,2020.
  53. ^ ""Kindred Spirits: Margaret Bonds and Edna St. Vincent Millay"". February 27, 2021.
  54. ^ Malcolm Lazin (August 20, 2015). "Op-ed: Here Are the 31 Icons of 2015's Gay History Month". Advocate.com. Retrieved August 21, 2015.
  55. ^ Michael Browning (August 18, 1996). "The Eternal Flame"The Miami Herald. Archived from the original on December 17, 2010.
  56. ^ Irvin, Richard (2018). The Early Shows: A Reference Guide to Network and Syndicated Prime-Time Television Series from 1944 to 1949. Albany, GA: BearManor Media. Retrieved October 4, 2020.
  57. ^ Sinclair, N. et al. (2006). Mathematics and the Aesthetic. New York: Springer. p. 111.
  58. ^ Millay, Edna St. Vincent. "Renascence"
  59. ^ Millay, Edna St. Vincent. "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver"
  60. ^ "Poetry Pairing: Edna St. Vincent Millay"READ THIS. April 18, 2018. Retrieved January 10, 2020.
  61. ^ Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Selected Poems. Harper Collins, 1991
  62. ^ Obituary Variety, October 25, 1950.

Further reading

External links