Edna St. Vincent Millay: American Poet, Dramatist, and Fiction Writer
By: Blythe Friedman
Edna St. Vincent Millay: American Poet, Dramatist, and Fiction writer
"We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.” (Edna St. Vincent Millay). Edna St. Vincent Millay grew up with bright green eyes and striking red hair. Her first big début was when her poem “Renascence” was first published. This attracted national acclaim, which got her into Vassar College; from then on she published seventeen books, four plays, an opera, and a translation of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil. Her work is about love, and poetry.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine in 1892; she was the first of three children of Henry Tolman and Cora Buzzelle Millay. At the age of eight her mother divorced Tolman, because he was not bringing in enough money for the family. In order to do this, Millay’s mother had to work especially hard as a home nurse to bring in enough money. Millay was often left in charge of cooking, cleaning, taking care of her two sisters and taking care of the house, all at the age of ten. To take of some of the burden, of taking care of the cooking, cleaning, and taking care of her sisters, she started writing poetry, plays, and poems. She then submitted her poetry to a local kid’s magazine and won many awards for it. After a while the magazine wouldn’t let her submit any more poetry because she was too old, so she entered herself into an poetry contest with her poem “Renascence”. Millay got into the top five contenders and got her work published in The Lyric Year. She was twenty when she got her work published.
After the “Renascence” was published, someone offered her a scholarship to Vassar College. She took the scholarship because otherwise she wouldn’t be able to go since her family was too poor to afford going to college. After living a few years in Greenwich Village, she started having a lot of sexual relations without being married. While doing this, it made her publish her popular 2nd book, A Few Figs for Thistles (1920). This book included her most famous poem First Fig which contained her most famous line “My candle burns at both ends”, which is still talked about today. This poem is still talked about today, because it is a very famous quote, and it means that you have so many demands in you life, and because of that you keep shrinking and shrinking
In 1923 Edna St. Vincent Millay married Eugen Jan Boissevain. In the twenties Millay became involved in the movement to stay the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. She then wrote a number of poems about them. Then when the war broke out, she began writing verse propaganda. In 1949 Millay had a nervous breakdown. Five years later a terrible event happened that would change her world forever: her husband died. She continued to live alone in their house in Austerlitz. Within a year Millay died from a heart failure.
The first poem that Millay wrote was “Renascence”, this poem got her both a scholarship to Vassar College, and National Acclaim. This inspired her to write even more poetry, perhaps to get more attention from the press. The second book that she wrote, A Few Figs for Thistles (1920), got her most attention with the line” My candle burns at both ends”. This one poem that she wrote got her so much attention, that it is still talked about today. From then on she wrote over 5 more books. Millay has and always will be one the greatest poet who still writes in English form. She has published 17 books, four plays, an opera, and a translation of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil.
Published Works:
Renascence and Other Poems (1917)
A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)
Second April (1921)
The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)
Poems (1923)
Distressing Dialogues (1924)
The Buck in the Snow (1928)
Fatal Interview (1931)
Wine from These Grapes (1934)
Conversations at Midnight (1937)
Huntsman, What Quarry? (1939)
Make Bright the Arrows (1940)
There Are No Islands Any More (1940)
Collected Sonnets (1941)
Invocation of the Muses (1941)
Collected Lyrics (1943)
Poem and Prayer for an Invading Army (1944)
Collected Poems (1949)
Mine the Harvest (1954)
Collected Poems (1956)
Drama
The
Lamp and the Bell (1921)
Aria da Capo (1921)
Two Slatterns and a King (1921)
Distressing Dialogues (1924) Written under the pseudonym Nancy
Boyd.
Three Plays (1926)
The King's Henchmanv (1927)
The Princess Marries the Page (1932)
The Murder of Lidice (1942)