<\/div>\nEdna St. Vincent Millay<\/p>\n
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 the family home in 1899. Cora encouraged her girls to be ambitious and self-sufficient, teaching 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: she 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 while in school, including the English actress Wynne Matthison. 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.<\/p>\n
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 could find an editor willing to accept. She and the other writers of Greenwich Village were, according to Millay herself, “very, very poor and very, very merry.” She joined the Provincetown Players in their early days, and befriended writers such as Witter Bynner, Edmund Wilson, Susan Glaspell, and Floyd Dell, who asked for Millay’s hand in marriage. Millay, who was openly bisexual, refused, despite Dell’s attempts to persuade her otherwise. That same year Millay published A Few Figs from Thistles (1920), a volume of poetry which drew much attention for its controversial descriptions of female sexuality and feminism. In 1923 her fourth volume of poems, The Harp Weaver, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In addition to publishing three plays in verse, Millay also wrote the libretto of one of the few American grand operas, The King’s Henchman (1927).<\/p>\n
Millay married Eugen Boissevain, a self-proclaimed feminist and widower of Inez Milholland, in 1923. Boissevain gave up his own pursuits to manage Millay’s literary career, setting up the readings and public appearances for which Millay grew quite famous. According to Millay’s own accounts, the couple acted liked two bachelors, remaining “sexually open” throughout their twenty-six-year marriage, which ended with Boissevain’s death in 1949. Edna St. Vincent Millay died in 1950.<\/p>\n
A Selected Bibliography <\/p>\n
Poetry <\/p>\n
A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)
\nCollected Lyrics (1943)
\nCollected Poems (1949)
\nCollected Poems (1956)
\nCollected Sonnets (1941)
\nConversations at Midnight (1937)
\nDistressing Dialogues (1924)
\nFatal Interview (1931)
\nHuntsman, What Quarry? (1939)
\nInvocation of the Muses (1941)
\nMake Bright the Arrows (1940)
\nMine the Harvest (1954)
\nPoem and Prayer for an Invading Army (1944)
\nPoems (1923)
\nRenascence and Other Poems (1917)
\nSecond April (1921)
\nThe Buck in the Snow (1928)
\nThe Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)
\nThere Are No Islands Any More (1940)
\nWine from These Grapes (1934)<\/p>\n
\nDrama <\/p>\n
Aria da Capo (1921)
\nDistressing Dialogues (1924)
\nThe King’s Henchmanv (1927)
\nThe Lamp and the Bell (1921)
\nThe Murder of Lidice (1942)
\nThe Princess Marries the Page (1932)
\nThree Plays (1926)
\nTwo Slatterns and a King (1921<\/p>\n
\n Renascence<\/b>
\nALL I could see from where I stood
\nWas three long mountains and a wood;
\nI turned and looked the other way,
\nAnd saw three islands in a bay.
\nSo with my eyes I traced the line
\nOf the horizon, thin and fine,
\nStraight around till I was come
\nBack to where I\u2019d started from;
\nAnd all I saw from where I stood
\nWas three long mountains and a wood.
\nOver these things I could not see:
\nThese were the things that bounded me;
\nAnd I could touch them with my hand,
\nAlmost, I thought, from where I stand.
\nAnd all at once things seemed so small
\nMy breath came short, and scarce at all.
\nBut, sure, the sky is big, I said;
\nMiles and miles above my head;
\nSo here upon my back I\u2019ll lie
\nAnd look my fill into the sky.
\nAnd so I looked, and, after all,
\nThe sky was not so very tall.
\nThe sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
\nAnd\u2014sure enough!\u2014I see the top!
\nThe sky, I thought, is not so grand;
\nI \u2019most could touch it with my hand!
\nAnd reaching up my hand to try,
\nI screamed to feel it touch the sky.
\nI screamed, and\u2014lo!\u2014Infinity
\nCame down and settled over me;
\nForced back my scream into my chest,
\nBent back my arm upon my breast,
\nAnd, pressing of the Undefined
\nThe definition on my mind,
\nHeld up before my eyes a glass
\nThrough which my shrinking sight did pass
\nUntil it seemed I must behold
\nImmensity made manifold;
\nWhispered to me a word whose sound
\nDeafened the air for worlds around,
\nAnd brought unmuffled to my ears
\nThe gossiping of friendly spheres,
\nThe creaking of the tented sky,
\nThe ticking of Eternity.
\nI saw and heard and knew at last
\nThe How and Why of all things, past,
\nAnd present, and forevermore.
\nThe Universe, cleft to the core,
\nLay open to my probing sense
\nThat, sick\u2019ning, I would fain pluck thence
\nBut could not,\u2014nay! But needs must suck
\nAt the great wound, and could not pluck
\nMy lips away till I had drawn
\nAll venom out.\u2014Ah, fearful pawn!
\nFor my omniscience paid I toll
\nIn infinite remorse of soul.
\nAll sin was of my sinning, all
\nAtoning mine, and mine the gall
\nOf all regret. Mine was the weight
\nOf every brooded wrong, the hate
\nThat stood behind each envious thrust,
\nMine every greed, mine every lust.
\nAnd all the while for every grief,
\nEach suffering, I craved relief
\nWith individual desire,\u2014
\nCraved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
\nAbout a thousand people crawl;
\nPerished with each,\u2014then mourned for all!
\nA man was starving in Capri;
\nHe moved his eyes and looked at me;
\nI felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
\nAnd knew his hunger as my own.
\nI saw at sea a great fog bank
\nBetween two ships that struck and sank;
\nA thousand screams the heavens smote;
\nAnd every scream tore through my throat.
\nNo hurt I did not feel, no death
\nThat was not mine; mine each last breath
\nThat, crying, met an answering cry
\nFrom the compassion that was I.
\nAll suffering mine, and mine its rod;
\nMine, pity like the pity of God.
\nAh, awful weight! Infinity
\nPressed down upon the finite Me!
\nMy anguished spirit, like a bird,
\nBeating against my lips I heard;
\nYet lay the weight so close about
\nThere was no room for it without.
\nAnd so beneath the weight lay I
\nAnd suffered death, but could not die. <\/p>\n
Long had I lain thus, craving death,
\nWhen quietly the earth beneath
\nGave way, and inch by inch, so great
\nAt last had grown the crushing weight,
\nInto the earth I sank till I
\nFull six feet under ground did lie,
\nAnd sank no more,\u2014there is no weight
\nCan follow here, however great.
\nFrom off my breast I felt it roll,
\nAnd as it went my tortured soul
\nBurst forth and fled in such a gust
\nThat all about me swirled the dust. <\/p>\n
Deep in the earth I rested now;
\nCool is its hand upon the brow
\nAnd soft its breast beneath the head
\nOf one who is so gladly dead.
\nAnd all at once, and over all
\nThe pitying rain began to fall;
\nI lay and heard each pattering hoof
\nUpon my lowly, thatch\u00e8d roof,
\nAnd seemed to love the sound far more
\nThan ever I had done before.
\nFor rain it hath a friendly sound
\nTo one who\u2019s six feet under ground;
\nAnd scarce the friendly voice or face:
\nA grave is such a quiet place. <\/p>\n
The rain, I said, is kind to come
\nAnd speak to me in my new home.
\nI would I were alive again
\nTo kiss the fingers of the rain,
\nTo drink into my eyes the shine
\nOf every slanting silver line,
\nTo catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
\nFrom drenched and dripping apple-trees.
\nFor soon the shower will be done,
\nAnd then the broad face of the sun
\nWill laugh above the rain-soaked earth
\nUntil the world with answering mirth
\nShakes joyously, and each round drop
\nRolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.
\nHow can I bear it; buried here,
\nWhile overhead the sky grows clear
\nAnd blue again after the storm?
\nO, multi-colored, multiform,
\nBeloved beauty over me,
\nThat I shall never, never see
\nAgain! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
\nThat I shall never more behold!
\nSleeping your myriad magics through,
\nClose-sepulchred away from you!
\nO God, I cried, give me new birth,
\nAnd put me back upon the earth!
\nUpset each cloud\u2019s gigantic gourd
\nAnd let the heavy rain, down-poured
\nIn one big torrent, set me free,
\nWashing my grave away from me! <\/p>\n
I ceased; and through the breathless hush
\nThat answered me, the far-off rush
\nOf herald wings came whispering
\nLike music down the vibrant string
\nOf my ascending prayer, and\u2014crash!
\nBefore the wild wind\u2019s whistling lash
\nThe startled storm-clouds reared on high
\nAnd plunged in terror down the sky,
\nAnd the big rain in one black wave
\nFell from the sky and struck my grave.
\nI know not how such things can be;
\nI only know there came to me
\nA fragrance such as never clings
\nTo aught save happy living things;
\nA sound as of some joyous elf
\nSinging sweet songs to please himself,
\nAnd, through and over everything,
\nA sense of glad awakening.
\nThe grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,
\nWhispering to me I could hear;
\nI felt the rain\u2019s cool finger-tips
\nBrushed tenderly across my lips,
\nLaid gently on my seal\u00e8d sight,
\nAnd all at once the heavy night
\nFell from my eyes and I could see,\u2014
\nA drenched and dripping apple-tree,
\nA last long line of silver rain,
\nA sky grown clear and blue again.
\nAnd as I looked a quickening gust
\nOf wind blew up to me and thrust
\nInto my face a miracle
\nOf orchard-breath, and with the smell,\u2014
\nI know not how such things can be!\u2014
\nI breathed my soul back into me.
\nAh! Up then from the ground sprang I
\nAnd hailed the earth with such a cry
\nAs is not heard save from a man
\nWho has been dead, and lives again.
\nAbout the trees my arms I wound;
\nLike one gone mad I hugged the ground;
\nI raised my quivering arms on high;
\nI laughed and laughed into the sky,
\nTill at my throat a strangling sob
\nCaught fiercely, and a great heart-throb
\nSent instant tears into my eyes;
\nO God, I cried, no dark disguise
\nCan e\u2019er hereafter hide from me
\nThy radiant identity!
\nThou canst not move across the grass
\nBut my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
\nNor speak, however silently,
\nBut my hushed voice will answer Thee.
\nI know the path that tells Thy way
\nThrough the cool eve of every day;
\nGod, I can push the grass apart
\nAnd lay my finger on Thy heart! <\/p>\n
The world stands out on either side
\nNo wider than the heart is wide;
\nAbove the world is stretched the sky,\u2014
\nNo higher than the soul is high.
\nThe heart can push the sea and land
\nFarther away on either hand;
\nThe soul can split the sky in two,
\nAnd let the face of God shine through.
\nBut East and West will pinch the heart
\nThat can not keep them pushed apart;
\nAnd he whose soul is flat\u2014the sky
\nWill cave in on him by and by. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
first woman to receive Nobel prize in poetry 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 the family home in 1899. Cora encouraged her girls to be […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":546,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/546"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}