Edna St. Vincent Millay

Poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, on February 22, 1892. Her mother, Cora, raised her three daughters on her own after asking her husband to leave their home in 1899. Cora encouraged her daughters to be ambitious and self-sufficient. She taught them an appreciation of music and literature from an early age. In 1912, at her mother's urging, Millay entered her poem "Renascence" into a contest. Millay won fourth place and publication in The Lyric Year, bringing her immediate acclaim and a scholarship to Vassar. There, she continued to write poetry and became involved in the theater. She also developed intimate relationships with several women. In 1917, the year of her graduation, Millay published her first book, "Renascence and Other Poems."At the request of Vassar's drama department, she also wrote her first verse play, "The Lamp and the Bell" (1921), a work about love between women.

The Plaid Dress

Strong sun, that bleach
The curtains of my room, can you not render
Colourless this dress I wear?--
This violent plaid
Of purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripe
Of thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds done
Through indolence high judgments given here in haste;
The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste?

No more uncoloured than unmade,
I fear, can be this garment that I may not doff;
Confession does not strip it off,
To send me homeward eased and bare;

All through the formal, unoffending evening, under the clean
Bright hair,
Lining the subtle gown. . .it is not seen,
But it is there.

In 1922, Millay published a book of poetry called "A Few Figs from Thistles." In this volume, she described female sexuality in a way that gained her much attention, as she put forth the idea that a woman has every right to sexual pleasure and no obligation to fidelity.

Millay, whose friends called her "Vincent," then moved to New York's Greenwich Village, where she led a notoriously Bohemian life. She lived in a nine-foot-wide attic and wrote anything she thought editors would publish.

She began to take men as lovers, as well. Floyd Dell was her first male lover. He was disappointed when she continued affairs with women after her relationship with him. He proposed to her at one point, but she refused.

In 1923, Millay married Eugen Boissevain, a self-proclaimed feminist. Their marriage was agreed to be sexually open, though little is known about how she conducted her personal life once they married. She claimed he allowed her personal freedom and that they lived like "two bachelors." She wrote a great deal while married. Eugen managed her literary career. They were together until his death in 1949. Millay died the following year of heart failure.


Three Songs of Shattering

I

The first rose on my rose-tree
Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
During sad days when to me
Nothing mattered.

Grief of grief has drained me clean;
Still it seems a pity
No one saw,—it must have been
Very pretty.

II

Let the little birds sing;
Let the little lambs play;
Spring is here; and so 'tis spring;—
But not in the old way!

I recall a place
Where a plum-tree grew;
There you lifted up your face,
And blossoms covered you.

If the little birds sing,

 

Kin to Sorrow

Am I kin to Sorrow,
That so oft
Falls the knocker of my door ---
Neither loud nor soft,
But as long accustomed,
Under Sorrow's hand?
Marigolds around the step
And rosemary stand,
And then comes Sorrow--
And what does Sorrow care
For the rosemary
Or the marigolds there?
Am I kin to Sorrow?
Are we kin?
That so oft upon my door—
Oh, come in!
And the little lambs play,
Spring is here; and so 'tis spring—
But not in the old way!III

All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree!
Ere spring was going--ah, spring is gone!
And there comes no summer to the like of you and me,--
Blossom time is early, but no fruit sets on.

All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree,
Browned at the edges, turned in a day;
And I would with all my heart they trimmed a mound for me,
And weeds were tall on all the paths that led that way!