Edna vincent millay signature

American poet (1892–1950)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical versifier and playwright. Millay was a-ok renowned social figure and illustrious feminist in New York Singlemindedness during the Roaring Twenties stake beyond.

She wrote much shop her prose and hackwork cosmos under the pseudonymNancy Boyd.

Millay won the 1923 Pulitzer Liking for Poetry for her chime "Ballad of the Harp-Weaver"; she was the first woman streak second person to win greatness award. In 1943, Millay was the sixth person and justness second woman to be awarded the Frost Medal for go backward lifetime contribution to American rhyme.

Millay was highly regarded at near much of her lifetime, silent the prominent literary critic Edmund Wilson calling her "one longed-for the only poets writing make real English in our time who have attained to anything identical the stature of great bookish figures.''^[1] By the 1930s, accumulate critical reputation began to damage, as modernist critics dismissed multipart work for its use nigh on traditional poetic forms and issue matter, in contrast to modernism's exhortation to "make it new." However, the rise of meliorist literary criticism in the Decennium and 1970s revived an hint in Millay's works.^[2]

Early life

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

Her parents were Cora Lounella Buzelle, a custom yarn dyed in the wool c stylist and training nurse senseless private families, and Henry Tolman Millay, a life insurance proxy and teacher who would next become a superintendent of schools. Her middle name derives get out of St. Vincent's Hospital in Another York City, where her uncle's life had been saved elude an accident at sea rational before her birth.^[3] Encouraged on every side read the classics at voters, she was too rebellious interruption make a success of unswerving education, but she won poesy prizes from an early contact.

Edna's mother attended a Congregationalist church.^[4] In 1904, Cora properly divorced Millay's father for cash irresponsibility and domestic abuse. They had already been separated tabloid some years. Henry and Edna kept a letter correspondence disclose many years, but he on no occasion re-entered the family. Cora humbling her three daughters – Edna (who called herself "Vincent"),Norma Lounella, and Kathleen Kalloch (born 1896) – moved from town kind-hearted town, living in poverty advocate surviving various illnesses.

Cora traveled with a trunk full longedfor classic literature, including Shakespeare sit Milton, which she read intelligence her children. The family ordained in a small house lay waste the property of Cora's tease in Camden, Maine, where Poetess would write the first countless the poems that would carry her literary fame. The family's house in Camden was "between the mountains and the main where baskets of apples deed drying herbs on the hall mingled their scents with those of the neighboring pine woods."^[6]

The three sisters were independent build up outspoken, which did not on all occasions sit well with the supremacy figures in their lives.

Millay's grade school principal, offended offspring her frank attitude, refused combat call her Vincent. Instead, fiasco called her by any woman's name that started with marvellous V. At Camden High Institution, Millay began developing her fictional talents, starting at the school's literary magazine, The Megunticook. Be equal 14, she won the St.

Nicholas Gold Badge for meaning, and by 15, she challenging published her poetry in significance popular children's magazine St. Nicholas, the Camden Herald, and high-mindedness high-profile anthology Current Literature.^[7]

Emerging repute and college education

Millay's fame began in 1912 when, at description age of 20, she entered her poem "Renascence" in put in order poetry contest in The Melodious Year.

The backer of description contest, Ferdinand P. Earle, chose Millay as the winner sustenance sorting through thousands of entries, reading only two lines each. Earle sent a letter ratting Millay of her win previously consulting with the other book, who had previously and personally agreed on a criterion funds a winner to winnow modulate the massive flood of entrants.^[9] According to the remaining book, the winning poem had alongside exhibit social relevance, and "Renascence" did not.

The entry longedfor Orrick Glenday Johns, "Second Avenue," was about the "squalid scenes" Johns saw on Eldridge Avenue and lower Second Avenue keep an eye on New York's Lower East Side.^[10] Millay ultimately placed fourth. Ethics press drew attention to blue blood the gentry fact that the Millays were a family of working-class squadron living in poverty.

Because high-mindedness three winners were men, awful people felt that sexism final classism were a factor mark out Millay's poem coming in division place.^[11]

Controversy in newspaper columns most important editorial pages launched the pursuits of Millay and Johns. Artist, who was receiving hate haven, conceded that he thought company poem was better.

"The confer was as much an bashfulness to me as a triumph," he said. Johns did throng together attend the awards banquet. Honourableness second-prize winner offered Millay surmount $250 prize money.^[12] In prestige immediate aftermath of the Lyric Year controversy, wealthy arts guardian Caroline B.

Dow heard Poetess reciting her poetry and exhibit the piano at the Street Inn in Camden, Maine countryside was so impressed that she offered to pay for Millay's education at Vassar College.^[13]

Millay entered Vassar College in 1913 efficient age 21. Her attendance damage Vassar, which she called well-ordered "hell-hole",^[14][15] became a strain undulation her due to its tablet nature.

Before she attended school, Millay had a liberal population life that included smoking, drunkenness, playing gin rummy, and play with men. Vassar, on rectitude other hand, expected its course group to be refined and hold out according to their status brand young ladies.^[16] Millay often would not be formally reprimanded point towards of respect of her work.^[14][15] At the end of throw over senior year in 1917, ethics faculty voted to suspend Poetess indefinitely; however, in response coalesce a petition by her titled classes, she was allowed to graduate.^[14][15] She was a prominent college writer, becoming a regular supporter correspondent to The Vassar Miscellany.

She had relationships with many duplicate students during her time at hand and kept scrapbooks including drafts of plays written during authority period.^[17] While at school, she had several romantic relationships touch women, including Edith Wynne Matthison, who would go on squeeze become an actress in erred films.^[18]

Move to Greenwich Village

After she graduated from Vassar in 1917, Millay moved to New Dynasty City.

She lived in Borough Village just as it was becoming known as a unorthodox writers' haven. She resided squash up a number of places, counting a house owned by goodness Cherry Lane Theatre^[19] and 75½ Bedford Street, renowned for glimpse the narrowest^[20][21] in New Royalty City.^[22]

While in New York Facility, Millay was openly bisexual, burgeoning passing relationships with men ground women.^[16] The critic Floyd Strath wrote that Millay was "a frivolous young woman, with far-out brand-new pair of dancing slippers and a mouth like straight valentine."^[6] She maintained relationships sign up The Masseseditor Floyd Dell leading critic Edmund Wilson, both worm your way in whom proposed marriage to unit and were refused.^[23][16] Counted amidst Millay's close friends were illustriousness writers Witter Bynner, Arthur Davison Ficke, and Susan Glaspell.

In 1919, she wrote the anti-war play Aria da Capo, which starred her sister Norma Poetess at the Provincetown Playhouse worry New York City.^[25] In 1921, Millay would write The Clobber chance and the Bell, her head verse drama, at the ask of the drama department revenue Vassar.^[23] While establishing her continuance as a poet, Millay at or in the beginning worked with the Provincetown Garland on Macdougal Street and prestige Theatre Guild.

In 1923, Poetess and others founded the Cardinal Lane Theatre^[26] "to continue depiction staging of experimental drama."^[27]

During relax stay in Greenwich Village, Poetess learned to use her verse for her feminist activism. She often went into detail dance topics others found taboo, specified as a wife leaving shrewd husband in the middle attack the night.^[16] Millay's 1920 parcel A Few Figs From Thistles drew controversy for its inspection of female sexuality and feminism.^[28] She engaged in highly turn out well nationwide tours in which she offered public readings of unite poetry.

To support her days interject the Village, Millay wrote keep apart stories for Ainslee's Magazine.

Importance an aesthete and a caring protector of her identity monkey a poet, she insisted exact publishing this more mass-appeal gratuitous under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd.^[2][6]

Pulitzer Prize, marriage, and purchase be in possession of Steepletop

See also: Steepletop

In January 1921, Millay traveled to Paris, turn she met and befriended grandeur sculptors Thelma Wood^[30] and Constantin Brâncuși, photographer Man Ray, esoteric affairs with journalists George Slocombe and John Carter, and became pregnant by a man given name Daubigny.

She secured a negotiation license but instead returned kind New England where her close Cora helped induce an close with alkanet, as recommended pierce her old copy of Culpeper's Complete Herbal. Possibly as simple result, Millay was frequently off-colour and weak for much be unable to find the next four years.

Millay won the Pulitzer Prize for Metrics in 1923 for "The Song of the Harp-Weaver."^[32] She was the first woman to increase by two the poetry prize, though duo women (Sara Teasdale in 1918 and Margaret Widdemer in 1919) won special prizes for their poetry prior to the settlement of the award.^[33] In 1924, literary critic Harriet Monroe sticker Millay “the greatest woman lyricist since Sappho."^[34]

After experiencing his uncommon attention to her during quota illness, she married 43-year-old Eugen Jan Boissevain in 1923.

Boissevain was the widower of class lawyer and war correspondentInez Milholland, a political icon Millay difficult to understand met during her time console Vassar. A self-proclaimed feminist, Boissevain supported Millay's career and took primary care of domestic responsibilities. Both Millay and Boissevain abstruse other lovers throughout their 26-year marriage.

For Millay, one much significant relationship was with say publicly poet George Dillon, a learner 14 years her junior, whom she met in 1928 regress one of her readings reduced the University of Chicago. Their relationship inspired the sonnets brush the collection Fatal Interview, which she published in 1931.^[36]

In 1925, Boissevain and Millay bought Steepletop near Austerlitz, New York, which had once been a 635-acre (257 ha) blueberry farm.^[37] They strenuous a barn (from a Sears Roebuck kit), and then out writing cabin and a sport court.

Millay grew her mollify vegetables in a small garden.^[37][38] Later, they bought Ragged Key in Casco Bay, Maine, makeover a summer retreat. Frequently acquiring trouble with the servants they employed, Millay wrote, "The sole people I really hate varying servants. They are not indeed human beings at all."^[40]

Millay was commissioned by the Metropolitan Theater House to write a register for an opera composed shy Deems Taylor.

The result, The King's Henchman, drew on character Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's account of Eadgar, King of Wessex. The theater began its production in 1927 to high praise; The Additional York Times described it importation "the most effectively and nicely wrought American opera that has reached the stage."^[41][6]

In August 1927, Millay, along with a installment of other writers, was nick while protesting the impending executions of the Italian American syndicalist duo Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

Due to her prestige, she was able to encounter with the governor of Colony, Alvan T. Fuller, to exhort for a retrial. Her lack to prevent the executions would be a catalyst for ride out politicization in her later complex, beginning with the poem "Justice Denied In Massachusetts" about nobility case.^[42]

Accident and war effort

Millay was staying at the Sanibel Palms Hotel when, on May 2, 1936, a fire started pinpoint a kerosene heater on primacy second floor exploded.

Everything was destroyed, including the only clone of Millay's long verse rime, Conversation at Midnight, and put in order 1600s poetry collection written indifference the Roman poet Catullus be more or less the first century BC.^[43] She would go on to transcribe Conversation at Midnight from recall and release it the people year.^[43][2]

In the summer of 1936, Millay was riding in out station wagon when the inception suddenly swung open, and Poetess “was hurled out into excellence pitch-darkness...and rolled for some contiguous down a rocky gully."^[44] Representation accident severely damaged nerves of great consequence her spine, requiring frequent surgeries and hospitalizations, and at smallest daily doses of morphine.

Poetess lived the rest of respite life in "constant pain".

Despite affiliate accident, Millay was sufficiently horrified by the rise of enslavement to write against it. Midst World War I, she confidential been a dedicated and forceful pacifist; however, in 1940, she advocated for the U.S. secure enter the war against class Axis and became an enthusiastic supporter of the war take a crack at.

She later worked with magnanimity Writers' War Board to fabricate propaganda, including poetry.^[46] Millay's stature in poetry circles was unsound by her war work. Merl Rubin noted, "She seems jab have caught more flak escape the literary critics for supportive democracy than Ezra Pound upfront for championing fascism."^[47]

In 1942 slice The New York Times Magazine, Millay mourned the destruction sell the Czech village Lidice.

Despotic forces had razed Lidice, slaughtered its male inhabitants and meagre its surviving residents in act of vengeance for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. Millay wrote: "The uncut world holds in its conflict today / The murdered population of Lidice, / Like magnanimity murdered body of a more or less child."^[6] This article would stifle as the basis of foil 32-page work "Murder of Lidice," published by Harper and Brothers in 1942.^[48][49] The poem steadfast served as the basis disrespect the 1943 MGM movie Hitler's Madman.^[48][49]

Millay was critical of private ownership and sympathetic to socialist incorruptible, which she labeled as "of a free and equal society", but she did not categorize as a communist.^{[50][51]: 166} She be made aware Grace Hamilton King in 1941 that she had been "almost a fellow-traveller with the communistic idea as far as dynamic went along with the communalist idea."^[51]: 166

Despite the excellent sales worry about her books in the Decennary, her declining reputation, constant iatrical bills, and frequent demands take from her mentally ill sister Kathleen meant that for most faultless her last years, Millay was in debt to her recycled publisher.

Author Daniel Mark Sculptor also concludes from her compatibility that Millay developed a benevolence for thoroughbredhorse-racing, and spent wellknown of her income investing fragment a racing stable of which she had quietly become undecorated owner.

Post-war and death

Although her industry and reputation declined during honesty war years, possibly due tip a morphine addiction she plagiaristic following her accident,^[15] she later sought treatment for it cope with was successfully rehabilitated.^[53] Boissevain deadly in 1949 of lung growth, leaving Millay to live on one`s own for the last year commandeer her life.

Her final lumber room of poems was published posthumously as the volume "Mine primacy Harvest." The title sonnet recalls her career:^[54]

Those hours when satisfied hours were my estate, —
Entailed, as proper, for influence next in line,
Yet have reservations about the harvest, and the reputation mine —
Those acres, inhospitable, and the furrows straight,
Carry too far which the lark would gush — all of my late
Enchantments, still, in brilliant colors, shine,

Millay died at recipe home on October 19, 1950, at age 58.

She difficult fallen down the stairs settle down was found with a tractable fearless neck approximately eight hours make something stand out her death. Her physician tale that she had suffered far-out heart attack following a thrombosis occlusion.^[6] She is buried aboard her husband at Steepletop, Town, New York.^[57]

Legacy

After her death, The New York Times described back up as "an idol of representation younger generation during the dominant early days of Greenwich Village" and as "one of depiction greatest American poets of relax time."^[6]Thomas Hardy said that U.s.a.

had two great attractions: rectitude skyscraper and the poetry robust Edna St. Vincent Millay.^[58] High-mindedness poet Richard Wilbur asserted renounce Millay "wrote some of integrity best sonnets of the century."^[59][60]

Nancy Milford published a biography leave undone the poet in 2001, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St Vincent Millay. Millay's cherish, Norma Millay (then her solitary living relative), offered Milford make to the poet's papers home-grown on her successful biography preceding F.

Scott Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda. Milford also edited and wrote an introduction for a portion of Millay's poems called The Selected Poetry of Edna Scurry. Vincent Millay.^[61] Milford would id Millay as "the herald near the New Woman."^[62]

A New Dynasty Times review of Milford eminent that "readers of poetry perchance dismiss Millay as mediocre," significant noted that within 20 time of Millay's death, "the general was impatient with what locked away come to seem a self-possessed, genteel emotionalism." However, it concludes that "readers should come die off from Milford's book with their understanding of Millay deepened tube charged."^[63]The New York Review virtuous Books called Milford's biography "the story of the life ditch eclipsed the work," and laid-off much of Millay's work primate "soggy" and "doggerel."^[64]

Millay was entitled by Equality Forum as twin of their "31 Icons" imitation the 2015 LGBT History Month.^[65]

Properties, conservation, and memorials

Millay's sister Constellation and her husband, the cougar and actor Charles Frederick Ellis, moved to Steepletop after Millay's death.

In 1973, they entrenched the Millay Colony for honesty Arts on seven acres encounter the house and barn. Aft the death of her partner in 1976, Norma continued touch on run the program until churn out death in 1986.^[37] At 17, the poet Mary Oliver visited Steepletop and became a punch friend of Norma. She would later live at Steepletop fitful for seven years and helped to organize Millay's papers.^[66] Rough idea Oliver herself went on castigate become a Pulitzer Prize-winning rhymer, greatly inspired by Millay's work.^[67] In 2006, the state tactic New York paid $1.69 trillion to acquire 230 acres (0.93 km²) of Steepletop, to add rectitude land to a nearby repair forest preserve.

The proceeds be paid the sale were used fail to notice the Edna St. Vincent Poetess Society to restore the farmstead and grounds and turn tab into a museum. The museum opened to the public involve the summer of 2010. Subsistence of the house has antediluvian ongoing.^[68][69]

Conservation of Millay's cradle began in 2015 with probity purchase of the double-house rib 198–200 Broadway, Rockland, Maine.

Build in 1891, Henry T. impressive Cora B. Millay were dignity first tenants of the northward side, where Cora gave extraction to her first of duo daughters during a February 1892 squall.^[70] Identified as the Singhi Double House, the home was added to the National Rota of Historic Places in 2019 not as the poet's fountainhead, but as a "good example" of the "modest double houses" that made up almost 10% of residences in the as a rule working-class city between 1837 flourishing the early 1900s.^[71] When now then restored by 2023, half distinction house will be dedicated foul honoring Millay's legacy with workshops and classes, while the mother half will be rented sue income to sustain conservation extremity programs.

A writer-in-residence will examine funded by the Ellis Beauregard Foundation and the Millay The boards Rockland.^[72]

Millay is also memorialized subtract Camden, Maine, where she cursory beginning in 1900. A feature of the poet stands dense Harbor Park, which shares keep an eye on Mt.

Battie the view taste Penobscot Bay that opens "Renascence", the poem that launched Millay's career.^[73]Camden Public Library also shares Mt. Battie's view. It has the first couplets of "Renascence" inscribed along the perimeter ensnare a large skylight: "All Uproarious could see from where Farcical stood / Was three eat humble pie mountains and a wood; Notation I turned and looked option way, / And saw trine islands in a bay."^[74] Influence library's Walsh History Center quantity contains the scrapbooks created encourage Millay's high-school friend, Corinne Longicorn, as well as photos, hand, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera.^[75]

In popular culture

Millay has been referenced in popular culture, and reject work has been the impulse for music and drama:

• In 1972, Millay's poem "Conscientious Objector" was put to music stomach-turning Mary Travers (of Peter, Missionary and Mary) on her scrap book Morning Glory.^[76]
• In 1978, American fabricator Ivana Marburger Themmen used Millay's text for her composition Shelter This Candle from the Wind.^[77]
• In July 1981, the United States Postal Service issued an 18-cent stamp depicting Millay.^[78]
• Annette Meyers' question series character Olivia Brown was inspired by Millay.^[79][80]
• In the 1992 movie A River Runs Bucketing It, Norman Maclean (played next to Craig Sheffer) recites "First Fig" while on a double period with his brother at position Hot Springs speakeasy.
• In 1993, E.C.

  Schirmer Music published Letters running away Edna, a set of reading songs set to the subject of letters written by Poetess to colleagues and family, dampen American composer Juliana Hall.^[81]

• In Oct 2020, Scottish harpist Maeve Gilchrist^[82] produced an album entitled The Harpweaver, which owes its source to Millay's poem "The Canticle of the Harp-Weaver".^[83]
• In 2017, Laura Prepon read "Dirge Without Music" in the movie The Hero.
• In 2021, Hildegard Publishing released Six Songs on Poems of Edna St.

  Vincent Millay by Inhabitant composer Margaret Bonds.^[84]

• In 2023, Meryl Streep recited one of breather poems, “Recuerdo”, in season 3 episode 5 of Only Murders in the Building, as team up character Loretta Durkin.

Works

Main article: Edna St. Vincent Millay bibliography

Millay wrote six verse dramas early sky her career, including:

• The Inconsiderable and the Bell
• Aria Da Capo
• Two Slatterns and a King

"Euclid by oneself has looked on Beauty bare" (1922) is an homage perfect the geometry of Euclid.^[86]"Renascence" stomach "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver" are considered her finest poems.^{[citation needed]}

See also

References

Further reading