Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American
lyrical poetLyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
, playwright and feminist. She received the
Pulitzer Prize for PoetryThe Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
, and was known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym
Nancy Boyd for her prose work. The poet
Richard WilburRichard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989....
asserted, "She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century."
Early life
Millay was born in
Rockland, MaineRockland is a city in Knox County, Maine, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 7,297. It is the county seat of Knox County. The city is a popular tourist destination...
to Cora Lounella, a nurse, and Henry Tollman Millay, a schoolteacher who would later become superintendent of schools. Her middle name derives from St. Vincent's Hospital in
New YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, 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."
In 1904, Cora officially divorced Millay's father for financial irresponsibility, but they had already been separated for some years. Cora and her three daughters, Edna (who called herself "Vincent"), Norma, and Kathleen, moved from town to town, living in poverty. Cora travelled with a trunk full of classic literature, including
ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
and
MiltonJohn Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, which she read to her children. The family settled in a small house on the property of Cora's aunt in
Camden, MaineCamden is a town in Knox County, Maine, United States. The population was 5,254 at the 2000 census. The population of the town more than triples during the summer months, due to tourists and summer residents. Camden is a famous summer colony in the Mid-Coast region of Maine...
, where Millay would write the first of the poems that would bring her literary fame.
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.
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. While at school she had several relationships with women, including
Edith Wynne MatthisonEdith Wynne Matthison was an Anglo-American stage actress who also appeared in two silent films.-Biography:...
, who would go on to become an actress in silent films.
[Millay biography from the Academy of American Poets] Millay entered
Vassar CollegeVassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
at 21, later than usual, and had relationships with several fellow students during her time there. In January, 1921, she went to
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where she met and befriended the sculptor Thelma Wood.
Millay’s fame began in 1912 when 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. In the immediate aftermath of the
Lyric Year controversy, 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 CollegeVassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
. Millay moved to
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
after her graduation in 1917.
Career
Millay lived in a number of places in
Greenwich VillageGreenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
, including a house owned by the
Cherry Lane TheatreThe Cherry Lane Theatre , located at 38 Commerce Street in the borough of Manhattan, was New York City's oldest, continuously running off-Broadway theater...
, renowned for being the smallest in New York City. The critic
Floyd DellFloyd Dell was an American author and critic.-Biography:Floyd Dell was born in Barry, Illinois on June 28, 1887....
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."
Millay described her life in New York as "very, very poor and very, very merry." Openly bisexual, she counted among her close friends the writers
Witter BynnerHarold Witter Bynner was an American poet, writer and scholar, known for his long residence in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at what is now the Inn of the Turquoise Bear.-Early life:...
,
Arthur Davison FickeArthur Davison Ficke was an American poet and lawyer known for several books of poetry, including Sonnets of a Portrait-Painter and for his involvement in the literary hoax of Spectrism . He is also known for his relationship with Edna St...
, and
Susan GlaspellSusan Keating Glaspell was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer and poet. She was a founding member of the Provincetown Players, one of the most important collaboratives in the development of modern drama in the United States...
, as well as
Floyd DellFloyd Dell was an American author and critic.-Biography:Floyd Dell was born in Barry, Illinois on June 28, 1887....
and the critic
Edmund WilsonEdmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
, both of whom proposed marriage to her and were refused.
Her 1920 collection
A Few Figs From Thistles drew controversy for its novel exploration of female sexuality and feminism. In 1921 she wrote the anti-war play
Aria da Capo. Millay won the
Pulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for Poetry in 1923 for "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver". She was only the third woman to win the poetry prize.
In 1923 she married 43-year-old Eugen Jan Boissevain (1880–1949), the widower of the labor lawyer and war correspondent
Inez MilhollandInez Milholland Boissevain was a suffragist, labor lawyer, World War I correspondent, and public speaker who greatly influenced the women's movement in America.-Biography:...
, a political icon Millay had known while living in Greenwich Village. A self-proclaimed feminist, Boissevain supported her career and took primary care of domestic responsibilities. Both Millay and Boissevain had other lovers throughout their twenty-six-year marriage. Millay's most significant such relationship during this time was with the poet George Dillon, who was fourteen years her junior, and for whom she wrote a number of her
sonnetA sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s.
In 1925, Boissevain and Millay bought
SteepletopSteepletop, or Edna St. Vincent Millay House was the farmhouse home of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and her husband Eugene Jan Boissevain, in Austerlitz, New York, United States. Her former home and gardens are maintained by the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society. It was...
near
Austerlitz, New YorkAusterlitz is a town in Columbia County, New York, United States. The population was 1,453 at the 2000 census. The town was named after the Battle of Austerlitz.The Town of Austerlitz is in the east part of Columbia County.- History :Ellis, Capt...
, which had been a 635 acres (257 ha) blueberry farm. The couple 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. The couple later bought
Ragged IslandRagged Island is an island in Harpswell, Maine, in Cumberland County, Maine, which is geographically within Casco Bay in the Gulf of Maine.-History:Ragged Island is notable as the summer home of poet Edna St...
in
Casco BayCasco Bay is an inlet of the Gulf of Maine on the southern coast of Maine, New England, United States. Its easternmost approach is Cape Small and its westernmost approach is Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth...
, Maine, as a summer retreat.
Millay's reputation was damaged by the poetry she wrote about the
AlliedThe Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
war effort during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Merle Rubin noted: "She seems to have caught more flak from the literary critics for supporting democracy than
Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
did for championing
fascismFascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
." In the
New York Times Millay mourned the Czechoslovak city of
LidiceLidice is a village in the Czech Republic just northwest of Prague. It is built on the site of a previous village of the same name which, as part of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was on orders from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, completely destroyed by German forces in reprisal...
, the site of a Nazi massacre:
The whole world holds in its arms today
The murdered village of Lidice,
Like the murdered body of a little child.
In 1943 Millay was the sixth person and the second woman to be awarded the
Frost MedalThe Robert Frost Medal is an award of the Poetry Society of America for "distinguished lifetime service to American poetry." Medalists receive a prize purse of $2,500....
for her lifetime contribution to American poetry. Boissevain died in 1949 of
lung cancerLung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
, and Millay lived alone for the last year of her life.
Death and Steepletop legacy
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 had a heart attack following a coronary occlusion.
[New York Times Obituary October 20, 1950 "Edna St. V. Millay Found Dead At 58". Accessed 2010-09-13] She was 58 years old.
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
Millay Colony for the ArtsThe Millay Colony for the Arts is an artist residency program in Austerlitz, New York. The colony offers one month residencies to visual artists, writers, poets and composers. The Millay Colony for the Arts was founded in 1973 by Norma Millay Ellis, sister of the poet Edna St...
on the seven acres (2.8 ha) around the house and barn. After the death of her husband in 1976, Norma continued to run the program until her death in 1986. At 17, the poet
Mary OliverMary Oliver is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's [America's] best-selling poet".-Early life:...
visited Steepletop and became a close friend of Norma. Oliver eventually lived there for seven years and helped to organize Millay's papers.
["The Land and Words of Mary Oliver, the Bard of Provincetown" July 5, 2009 New York Times. Accessed 2010-09-07] Mary Oliver herself went on to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, greatly inspired by Millay's work.
[Poetry Foundation Oliver biography. Accessed 2010-09-07] In 2006, the state of New York paid $1.69 million to acquire 230 acre (0.9307778 km²) of Steepletop, with the intention to add the land to a nearby state forest preserve. The proceeds of the sale were to be used to restore the farmhouse and turn it into a museum. Parts of the grounds of Steepletop, including a Poet's Walk that leads to Millay's grave, are now open to the public.
Works
Millay wrote five verse dramas early in her career, including
Two Slatterns and a King and
The Lamp and the Bell, a poem written for
Vassar CollegeVassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
about love between women.
She was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera House to write a
librettoA libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
for an opera composed by
Deems TaylorJoseph Deems Taylor was a U.S. composer, music critic, and promoter of classical music.-Career:Taylor initially planned to become an architect; however, despite minimal musical training he soon took to music composition. The result was a series of works for orchestra and/or voices...
. The result,
The King's Henchman, drew on the
Anglo-Saxon ChronicleThe Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great...
'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.
Her pacifist verse drama
Aria da Capo, a one-act play written for the
Provincetown PlayersThe Provincetown Players was an amateur group of writers and artists who, at the early part of the 20th Century, wanted to see a change in American theatre and created a company committed to producing new plays by exclusively American playwrights...
, is often anthologized. It aired live as an episode of
Academy TheatreAcademy Theatre is a drama anthology series that aired on NBC in 1949. It ran for eight weeks as the summer replacement for Chevrolet on Broadway.-Format:...
in 1949 on NBC.
"Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare" (1922) is an homage to the Geometry of
EuclidEuclid , fl. 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I...
. "Renascence" and "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver" 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."
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
said that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Poetry collections
- Renascence, and Other Poems (title poem first published under name E. Vincent Millay in The Lyric Year, 1912; collection includes God's World), M. Kennerley, 1917. reprinted, Books for Libraries Press, 1972.
- A Few Figs From Thistles: Poems and Four Sonnets, F. Shay, 1920, second [enlarged] edition published as A Few Figs From Thistles: Poems and Sonnets,F. Shay, 1921.
- Second April (poems; includes Spring, Ode to Silence,and The Beanstalk), M. Kennerley, 1921. reprinted, Harper, 1935
- The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver, F. Shay, 1922, reprinted as The Harp-Weaver, in The Harp-Weaver, and Other Poems (includes The Concert, Euclid Alone has Looked on Beauty Bare, and Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree), Harper, 1923.
- Poems, M. Secker, 1923.
- (Under pseudonym Nancy Boyd) Distressing Dialogues, preface by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Harper, 1924.
- The Buck in the Snow, and Other Poems (includes The Buck in the Snow [also see below] and On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven), Harper, 1928.
- Fatal Interview (sonnets), Harper, 1931.
- Wine from These Grapes (poems; includes Epitaph for the Race of Man and In the Grave No Flower), Harper, 1934.
- (Translator with George Dillon; and author of introduction) Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil, Harper, 1936.
- Conversation at Midnight (narrative poem), Harper, 1937.
- Huntsman, What Quarry? (poems), Harper, 1939.
- There Are No Islands, Any More: Lines Written in Passion and in Deep Concern for England, France, and My Own Country, Harper, 1940.
- Make Bright the Arrows: 1940 Notebook (poems), Harper, 1940.
- The Murder of Lidice (poem), Harper, 1942.
- Second April [and] The Buck in the Snow, introduction by William Rose Benét, Harper, 1950.
- Mine the Harvest (poems), edited by Norma Millay, Harper, 1954.
- Take Up the Song, Harper, 1986, reprinted with music by William Albright as Take Up the Song: Soprano Solo, Mixed Chorus, and Piano, Henmar Press, 1994.
- Selected Poems/The Centenary Edition, edited by Colin Falck, Harper Perennial, 1992.
Plays
- (And director) Aria da capo (one-act play in verse; first produced in Greenwich Village, NY, December 5, 1919), M. Kennerley, 1921 (also see below).
- The Lamp and the Bell (five-act play; first produced June 18, 1921), F. Shay, 1921 (also see below).
- Two Slatterns and a King: A Moral Interlude (play), Stewart Kidd, 1921.
- Three Plays (contains Two Slatterns and a King, Aria da capo, and The Lamp and the Bell), Harper, 1926.
- (Author of libretto) The King's Henchman (three-act play; first produced in New York, February 17, 1927), Harper, 1927.
- The Princess Marries the Page (one-act play), Harper, 1932.
Letters
- Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, edited by Allan Ross Macdougall, Harper, 1952.
External links
- Edna St. Vincent Millay at the Poetry Foundation.
- Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay - Biography & 18 poems (Ashes of Life, The Betrothal, Departure, Dirge, Ebb, Feast, First Fig, [Four Sonnets 1922], Grown Up, Humoresque, Lament, The Penitent, Recuerdo, Second Fig, Sonnets 1923, Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree, Sorrow, Spring)
- Edna Millay's Gravesite. Accessed 2010-09-13
- Edna St. Vincent Millay Society. Accessed 2010-09-13
- Archive and images at the Smithsonian Institute.
- LibriVox, Millay audio files in the public domain. Accessed 2010-09-13
- New York Times Obituary October 20, 1950 "Edna St. V. Millay Found Dead At 58". Accessed 2010-09-13