A magnificent anthology of the finest works of Edna St. Vincent Millay, perhaps the premier American lyricist of the twentieth century.
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"She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century." -- -- Richard Eberhart
"I know that Millay is a good poet because there are so many of her lines in my memory. She belonged to a generation which thought of poetry as song; when that notion revives, as it will, the great appeal of her work will be felt again." -- Richard Wilbur
"One of the only poets writing in English in our time who have attained anything like the stature of great literary figures." -- Edmund Wilson
"She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century." -- Richard Eberhart
"There are some who delight and inform. It's so much better, you see, for me, when a writer like Edna St. Vincent Millay speaks so deeply about her concern for herself, and does not offer us any altruisms. Then when I look through her eyes at how she sees a black or an Asian my heart is lightened." -- Maya Angelou
About the Author
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in 1892 in Rockland, Maine, the eldest of three daughters, and was encouraged by her mother to develop her talents for music and poetry. Her long poem "Renascence" won critical attention in an anthology contest in 1912 and secured for her a patron who enabled her to go to Vassar College.
After graduating in 1917 she lived in Greenwich Village in New York for a few years, acting, writing satirical pieces for journals (usually under a pseudonym), and continuing to work at her poetry. She traveled in Europe throughout 1921-22 as a "foreign correspondent" for Vanity Fair. Her collection A Few Figs from Thistles (1920) gained her a reputation for hedonistic wit and cynicism, but her other collections (including the earlier Renascence and Other Poems [1917]) are without exception more seriously passionate or reflective.
In 1923 she married Eugene Boissevain and -- after further travel -- embarked on a series of reading tours which helped to consolidate her nationwide renown. From 1925 onwards she lived at Steepletop, a farmstead in Austerlitz, New York, where her husband protected her from all responsibilities except her creative work. Often involved in feminist or political causes (including the Sacco-Vanzetti case of 1927), she turned to writing anti-fascist propaganda poetry in 1940 and further damaged a reputation already in decline. In her last years of her life she became more withdrawn and isolated, and her health, which had never been robust, became increasingly poor.
She died in 1950.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enchanting poems from an enchantress,
By
This review is from: Selected Poems (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)
The introduction to this collection of poetry says that Edna St. Vincent Millay has been criticized for not being sufficiently "modernist". He poems are too sentimental, too easy-to-read, and borrow too much from 18th century styles. Well the critics might be right but I love this poetry and plan to read more.Her most famous lines are here "My candle burns at both ends...it gives a lovely light", her first famous poem is here "Renascance"--this spooky poem gained her a mentor and an education at Vassar--and also present are poems from "Fatal Interview" and "Epitath for the Race of Man". My favorite poems are the short ones that talk of love: these are the easy-to-read poems dismissed by the critics. If you read this poem then you must read the potrait of Edna St. Vincent Millay in "The New Yorker" and the memoir "The Shores of Light" by Edmund Wilson, the later book reviewer for The New Yorker magazine. Edmun Wilson was just one of ESVM many jilted suitors. But she let him down gently her said. His book describes how he found work for her at Vanity Fair magazine. ESVM evidently charmed all the men she came in touch with. The editor of Vanity Fair complained that he could not have both of his editors in love with the same contributor to the magazine. Many of the ESVM poems here have to do with nature, like the poem "Spring". Perhaps this is because she moved out of Greenwich Village to the country and there she wrote collections such as "The Buck in Snow". When she got married and left the city she didn't lose touch with her circle of fans and hangers-on including Edmun Wilson. Wilson describes here there at her farm reciting her poetry--she knew all her poems by heart--to wide-eyed admirers. Alot of her poems here have no title. I imagine she might have felt that the title could be a distraction to a poem. If you can't think of a good one then don't create one at all. Finally, feminists certainly will be upset with lines like "I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind..." But this is good stuff and lets us peer inside the female heart. They are just like us men it appears "...feel a certain zest to bear your body's weight upon my breast". This stuff is just as erotic and passionate as Shakespeare's sonnets and lyric poems--well not quite but good enough.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
...makes you want to read more, more...,
By Cipriano "www.bookpuddle.blogspot.com" (Planet Claire) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Selected Poems (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)
I have just finished this, my first reading of Millay's poetry and I must say I enjoyed it. This anthology makes me want to read more, not less. Her poems convince me that a biography of her life would probably be a worthwhile read also. The escape she is longing for and never quite leaps into, her obvious disdain for anything artificial or constrained combined with her love and respect for the naturally occurring (freedom)... these are dominant themes. And everywhere, TREES and other growing things! It is amazing how often the trees, fruit, grain, the forest, orchards, mushrooms, moss and even weeds are the things which Millay uses to convey her philosophical reflections. In my opinion, her finest poem (Renascence) written when she was 19 reveals early on this connection she felt between revealed nature and transcendence. "God, I can push the grass apart/And lay my finger on Thy heart!"Colin Falck, in the Introduction comments that Millay was under-appreciated by those who considered her technique too traditional, and her content lacking in intellectual complexity. Did any of these critics read her sonnets I wonder? I agree with Falck's conclusion that "it is time we found a proper place for this intense, thoughtful, and magnificently literate poet." To the merciless critics I would send Millay's own words... "Cruel of heart, lay down my song./Your reading eyes have done me wrong./Not for you was the pen bitten,/And the mind wrung, and the song written."
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Overall, a fantastic selection from a great formal poet,
By
This review is from: Selected Poems (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)
The poems in this volume span the years from 1917 to 1954 and offer a generous sampling of Millay's writing. This is a "selected poems" rather than a "collected poems," so the pieces included are her most famous, and those that best represent her style. In general, I think the selected works of any poet can be more enjoyable than the collected works, because it's easier to process and appreciate a smaller volume of verse...800 pages of poetry from even your favorite poet can get weighty and monotonous. This volume is 150 pages, and includes a nice, lengthy introduction, "The Modern Lyricism of Edna Millay" by Colin Falck, which explains Millay's poetic philosophy and discusses her simultaneous love of irony and lyricism.
Most of Millay's poems, especially the early ones, are written in received forms, meaning they operate inside the constraints of meter and rhyme. She seems most fond of writing Petrarchan (Italian) sonnets, but simpler rhyming forms and longer free verse poems are also included. I've always admired the way Millay can express complex emotion without complicating her presentation--she's straightfoward, and you always understand what she's saying. Whether she's talking about disappointed love or feigned indifference, or relating an anecdote about city life, Millay is communicating clearly. The mood created by this cross-section of poems isn't all that hopeful, overall. There's a mild ongoing theme of grasping whatever enjoyment you can, since it's all bound to end quickly anyway, as in the short poem "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!" Some of her early poems like "The Unexplorer" and "Grown-Up" note the vast difference between childish imaginings about adulthood and the mundane reality of actually growing up, bringing in a little melancholy on that score, but the love poems are perhaps the most depressing of all. They mention dead love, temporary love, almost-love, unequal love--a more mature connection isn't really shown, so while Millay's a poetic whiz, you probably don't want to read her poems to anybody on Valentines Day There are some less appealing points in her work. "Renascence," for example, feels over-simplified and rhymey: 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. So with my eyes I traced the line Of the horizon, thin and fine, Straight around till I was come Back to where I'd started from (1-8) Of course, the poem goes on to deal with some serious concepts, but it starts with a nursery rhyme sound that can feel trite. Theses rhymes and rhythms can go too far, and some of Millay poems include a few spare exclamation points and personifications of things like Death and Beauty, but for all these difficulties, she still knows how to write a good ruleless free verse poem ("Spring" with it's "idiot April" concept is one) and the value of her skilled formal verse far outweighs the discomfort of her less successful forms. Her sonnets are really her chief accomplishment--they never seem too rhymey, and they contain some of her strongest portrayals of a woman's emotions and experiences. Her impressive "Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree" sequence of 17 sonnets tells the single story of a woman watching over her dying husband, and her individual sonnets manage to be beautiful, sad, and sharp at the same time as she deals with half-formed relationships ("I think I should have loved you presently"), begrudging attraction ("I, being born a woman and distressed"), living with the remnants of romantic memories ("What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why"), and the ultimate value of caring for another person ("Love is not all: is is not meat or drink"). For me, Edna St. Vincent Millay always been an excellent example of a female poet who was working with formal verse, and I've often turned to her poems when I wanted inspiration for my own work. Here is a writer who can "put Chaos into fourteen lines" and explore vital experiences within small spaces. She's a great choice if you're looking for clear-cut poetry and strong emotions.
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