The Books: Edna St. Vincent Millay: Collected Sonnets

Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry

The next book on my poetry shelf is Collected Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

“The poem seems to us to be phenomenal.” — Edward J. Wheeler, editor of “Current Literature”, on Edna’s poem ‘The Land of Romance’ – written when she was 14

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine on February 22, 1892.

We have named the little one Edna Vincent Millay. Don’t you think that is pretty? … the Vincent is for the ‘St. Vincent’ Hospital, the one that cared so well for our darling brother. Nell would have called it ‘Vincent’ if it had been a boy.” — Cora Millay on the birth of her first daughter, on George Washington’s birthday

Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of those rarest of creatures: a poet who was a celebrity in her lifetime. A Pulitzer-Prize winner (only the third woman to win one) there was obviously something about her that packed audiences into halls to hear her read. People describe how she read her own poems, people describe the effect she had on audiences: her clothes, her voice, her manner.

In October 1934, Edna Millay read at Yale. A young graduate student, Richard Sewell, who forty years later would become the biographer of Emily Dickinson, never forgot the impression she made that night. Walking to the center of Woolsey Hall, wrapped in a long black velvet cloak, her bright hair shining, she “stood before us,” he remembered, “like a daffodil.” Looking at her wrist, she told the audience that the poems she was about to read were from her new book, Wine From These Grapes, “which is coming off the press just about now.” That night she read with the zeal of a young Jeremiah, her words burning the air as she closed her reading with a sonnet from ‘The Epitaph for the Race of Man’. Tickets for her readings were wildly sought whether she was in Oklahoma City or Chicago, where the hall seating 1,600 was sold out and even with standees an extra hall had to be taken for the overflow of another 800 who listened to her over amplifiers.” — Nancy Milford, “Savage Beauty”

She understood that she had a persona, and she used it, creating it consciously. She was not in tune with the tenor of the times, the modernist onslaught of other poets and literature in general, writers who were ripping themselves away from the influences of the 19th century. You read Millay’s stuff and you can’t believe she was writing at the same time as Eliot, Yeats, Gertrude Stein, etc. You would believe she was a contemporary of Charlotte Bronte. Her “form” was the sonnet, deceptively simple (until you try to write one), and she was one of the most popular writers of the day.

I read a biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay) and found her to be self-absorbed, narcissistic, phonily coy and ruthless. An interesting combination and irresistible to men, apparently. I didn’t like her very much. Lock up your husbands and boyfriends when she’s around, ladies! I also felt kind of in awe – at someone who so clearly lived only by her own rules. Her family never reined her in just because of her gender. In the strict conventional mores of their town, the Millay family stood out. I love this quote:

For instance, they had shades at their window and nothing else. I don’t think they cared much. Well, once they stenciled apple blossoms, painted that pattern down the sides of the window. Or, for instance, they had a couple of plum trees in their backyard, and they never waited for the plums to ripen, but would pick them green, put them in vinegar, and call them ‘mock olives.’ Well, no one else did that sort of thing in Camden, don’t you see?” — Lena Dunbar, neighbor of the Millay family

Wow, they were REBELS, huh?

She was an actress in a traveling stock company (her first job), and was ambitious in her desire for greatness and fame.

“– oh, this was life! It was more than life, — it was art. I might pretend to myself [at home] as much and as long as I liked, — until the deep-vibrant note I had discovered in my voice … out-Hedda-ed Nazimova — yet was my native village unthrilled and unconvinced; I was asked to serve ice-cream at church socials, and the grocer-boy called me by name …” — Edna St. Vincent Millay on her first job as an actress in a traveling stock company

She yearned for immortality, where no one would DARE presume to call her by name. And she got it. She began writing poetry at a very young age, winning prestigious prizes. She was a woman, of a certain time. But propriety, and the mores of the day, didn’t come into her thinking at ALL. She was a total siren. I found her fascinating.

Boys don’t like me anyway because I won’t let them kiss me. It’s just like this: let boys kiss you and they’ll like you but you won’t … But I’d be almost willing to be engaged if I thought it would keep me from being lonesome … if I was engaged I would be going to the play tonight instead of sitting humped up on the steps in a drizzle that keeps my pencil point sticky. I’d be going out paddling tomorrow instead of practicing the Beethoven Funeral March Sonata. And I’d like to have something to do besides write in an old book. I’d like to have something happen to give me a jolt, something that would rattle my teeth and shake my hairpins out. — Edna St. Vincent Millay, in her journal, 1911

As a writer, she was a phenom: from very early on her gift of verse was recognized. Similar to Sylvia Plath, whose verses in high school were already being published. This was not a woman who suffered in obscurity. No. People read her stuff, powerful people, and immediately set out to help her, introduce her to the right people, set her up so that she could be a success.

I love her sonnet to Elinor Wylie, a poet and novelist who fascinates me (see my post on her here).

To Elinor Wylie
(In answer to a question about her)

Oh, she was beautiful in every part! —
The auburn hair that bound the subtle brain;
The lovely mouth cut clear by wit and pain,
Uttering oaths and nonsense, uttering art
In casual speech and curving at the smart
On startled ears of excellence too plain
For early morning! — Obit. Death from strain;
The soaring mind outstripped the tethered heart.
Yet here was one who had no need to die
To be remembered. Every word she said,
The lively malice of the hazel eye
Scanning the thumb-nail close — oh, dazzling dead,
How like a comet through the darkening sky
You raced! … would your return were heralded.

I love this one, too:

Sonnet xxviii
I pray if you love me, bear my joy
A little while, or let me weep your tears;
I, too, have seen the quavering Fate destroy
Your destiny’s bright spinning — the dull shears
Meeting not neatly, chewing at the thread, —
Nor can you well be less aware how fine
How staunch as wire, and how unwarranted
Endures the golden fortune that is mine.
I pray you for this day at least, my dear,
Fare by my side, that journey in the sun;
Else must I turn me from the blossoming year
And walk in grief the way that you have gone.
Let us go forth together to the spring:
Love must be this, if it be anything.

When you read the details of her life, her aching lovelorn poems seem even more poignant. Not because she was a particularly poignant personality – as a matter of fact, it is the opposite. That’s what, to me, is amazing. If you only read her poetry (and she’s perfect for when you are lovelorn or nostalgic – the sonnets read like letters to the beloved) you would think she was the most sentimental person on the planet, with one great love she yearned for all her days. The fact that she was a bit of a ruthless harlot makes her romantic “persona” even more interesting, more deliberate, more an act of CONJURING than reflection of personal truth. Kudos. Her talent obviously expressed herself in the old forms, at that time in disfavor – rhyming couplets and rigid-formed sonnets – but the amount of feeling she was able to get into each line, each verse, is incredible to me.

Millay’s reputation is a solid one, although she no longer stands as a giant of 20th century poetry, as she did at the time when she was alive. Yet her lyrical romantic sonnets are still poems that people adore, even love … and many of the greater more important poets don’t have that. It’s not good or bad, just a fact. She still can express the vagaries of love to our generation, in a more jaded time, with a high-flung cry of pain or ecstasy, that just works. It still sounds true.

This is my favorite of her sonnets. I read this and think, “God. Yes. That is EXACTLY what it is like.”

Sonnet ii
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, — so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.