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Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay

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Millay has been criticized for her lack of technical rigor, but that is the very essence of her accessibility to readers. Yes, she wrote poems that rhymed, sometimes to the point of sing-song meter, but her words carried weight. They meant (and still mean) something, not like the esoteric, pseudo-intellectual hodge-podge that passes for modern poetry. It seems that today's poets wear their inaccessibility as a badge of honor - that only a select group of academic word-smiths can even understand what they have written seems to represent success for them. Not so with Edna. She touches your heart, sometimes even breaks it, with common words, feelings, emotions. You don't have to work for her meaning, it is plainly presented for all to read. But beware! Her poems may be easy to understand, but they are impossible to forget.

There is so much to praise here, where do I start? How can I possibly communicate what these poems mean to me? "Renascence" alone takes my breath away - "The soul can split the sky in two, And let the face of God shine through." These words too, allow the divine to shine through. "Interim" is, perhaps, as beutiful a poem as I have ever read. The author brilliantly captures the essence of loss, that grief and confusion, the mind's inability to accept the notion of a life alone: "...part of your heart aches in my breast; part of my heart lies chilled in the damp earth with you. I have been torn in two, and suffer for the rest of me..." There are still so many other passages that leap off these pages. Her phrases are like literary gem stones: Sonnet XXVII: "I know I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year" - could it be said any more succinctly? This collection is a must for anyone who cares at all about poetry - American or otherwise.

how delightful to find a beautiful copy to introduce my granddaughter to Edna St. Vincent Millay.

"Time does not bring relief; you all have lied/ Who told me time would ease me of my pain!"

Old and wise beyond her years, Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote the majority of her most beautiful and famous works at a startlingly young age. One of few moments of comedy in Millay's otherwise (too) serious, brief life, was that as a published and award-winning poet while still in her teens, Millay entered college literature courses, taught by older teachers there to `instruct' her, even though they, themselves, had in most cases never published a line of verse or captured a single award!

"I burn my candle at both ends/ It will not last the night...."

This famous and oft quoted line about living the hectic life was Millay's, but many have forgotten that. A half-century after her passing, she is largely unremembered, lost among a crowd of later, lesser writers, ignored by subsequent ages that placed scant value on poetry. Hers was a life often lived invisibly behind her words. Though the events of her personal life, with her promiscuity and radical ideals, at times gained notoriety beyond even her professional achievements, Millay the poet is the force this book celebrates. Even the biographical section in this anthology is terse and respectful, which I found befitting. Edna St.Vincent Millay's poems, from the startlingly powerful Renascence, to her sonnets (the best composed in the English language in centuries) to her final experimental output at the time of World War Two, everything Millay achieved succeeds in taking the consciousness of an attentive reader into a higher realm, where the mind and soul are meditatively fused as at few other times in the human lifetime, and the voyage is one of utter transcendence.

Here is a short poem:

RECUERDO

We were very tired, we were very merry- We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable-- But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on a hilltop underneath the moon; And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry-- We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry, And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear, From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere; And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold, And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry, We hailed "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head, And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read; And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears, And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

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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!

I have owned this book for 11 years it is simplily the best that I have ever read. Millay words are elegant and precise. Her themes and her passion for them makes her timeless. Your libary is incomplete without EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY. I have studied poets from around the word, yet none have matched her poems. I am lucky to have discovered her work so early in life.

The book I am reviewing is "Collected Poems", by Edna St.Vincent Millay. It's a rare thing that you buy a collection of poems and love them all. These are poems of both grace and depth. Sometimes they recall me the few invaluable remains of Sappho's poetry. The series of sonnets contained in the book is of stunning beauty. The small pieces, like the one on a lady walking in the evening has a delicacy akin to the best chinese antique poems.

Over the years, I have worn the binding to pieces touching, flipping, - and don't hate me - earmarking the pages of this book when I wanted to remember something and couldn't find a spare scrap of paper for a marker. There is something so exposed and fragile about her work and, at the same time, she is very strong and beautifully resolved to her observations. She doesn't communicate in frilly riddles. She speaks to everyone. "Here in a Rocky Cup" on page 471 is one of her finest. It may break your heart! Enjoy.

Length:: 3:05 Mins

I don't think that many people would consider Millay a poet of the first water. And, sadly, after reading aloud all the poems in this 700+ page book, of essentially devoting a week of my life to her, I am more than inclined to agree.

Fortunately, she managed to discipline herself enough to write sonnets, wherein she does indeed shine at moments. It is from the best of these that I read in the video, with a brief prefatory comment on the poem and
on Millay's work as a whole.