Edna St. Vincent Millay

1892-1950

Rockland


Edna St. Vincent Millay was born Feb. 22, 1892, in Rockland. She was renowned for her traditional poetic and her bohemian living during her life. She infused the conventional forms of poetry with a fervent contemporary liberal and feminist spirit, coupled with the dark soul so many Maine writers posit. The publication in 1912 of her poem, "Renascence," won her acclaim. Early in her career, Millay wrote fiction under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. She later wrote several plays and an opera libretto.
millay

In 1923 Millay was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. In the 1930s she published sonnets that have earned her a lasting place among practitioners of the form. In later years, she applied her art to the Allied war effort and other social causes. Edmund Wilson deemed Millay "a spokesman for the human spirit". Few writers have commanded so wide and enduring an audience.
From 1923 to her death, Millay lived with her husband in Austerlitz, New York, at a farmhouse at Steepletop, now a National Historic Landmark.



Sonnet


Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,
And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing
The summer through, and each departing wing,
And all the nests that the bared branches show,
And all winds that in any weather blow,
And all the storms that the four seasons bring.
You go no more on your exultant feet
Up paths that only mist and morning knew,
Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat
Of a bird's wings too high in air to view,--
But you were something more than young and sweet
And fair,--and the long year remembers you.




BOOKS

A Few Figs from Thistles: Poems & Sonnets (1922)
The Harp Weaver and Other Poems (1923)
King's Henchmen (1927)
The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems (1928)
Edna St. Vincent Millay's Poems: Selected For Young People (1929)
Fatal Interview: Sonnets (1931)
Wine From These Grapes (1934)
Sung Under the Silver Umbrella: Poems for Young People (1935,
with children's poets such as Elizabeth Coatsworth and Rachel Field)
Conversation at Midnight (1937)
Huntsman, What Quarry? (1939)
There are No Islands, Any More (1940)
Collected Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1941)
The Murder of Lidice (1942)
Poems and Prayer for an Invading Army (1944)
Mine the Harvest (1954)
Collected Poems (1956)
Collected Lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1959)
Take Up the Song (1986)
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems (1991; centenary edition, ed. Colin Falck).


Millay Resources on the web

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Biographical, historical, and critical information from the
Modern American Poetry Project website.
 


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