Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950)

Loved this girl the first time I read her! Totally dig her poems- might even have a slight crush (kidding). Anyhow, happy date of birth, lady ...


One thing I really like about Millay is that she explores a wide range of styles and meter. I’ve held on to the poem below for about the last four months because the rhythm, meter, and rhyme scheme are simply gorgeous (take the rhyme scheme for example, abaaab … totally cool, like something Poe would do).

Anyhow, check it out, you’ll dig it, I promise …


Sorrow

Sorrow like a ceaseless rain
Beats upon my heart.
People twist and scream in pain--
Dawn will find them still again;
This has neither wax nor wane,
Neither stop nor start.

People dress and go to town;
I sit in my chair.
All my thoughts are slow and brown:
Standing up or sitting down
Little matters, or what gown
Or what shoes I wear.

Assault- Another Millay Poem

Here's another great poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The imagery here is especially gorgeous, and I can easily imagine myself aesthetically absorbed on a stroll such as hers . (Notice again here her stress on Beauty's overwhelming presence: waylaid by Beauty.)


Assault

I

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

II

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!



Of the Poem (in Brief):

This particular poem pulled me into the very moment Millay was referring to, especially the first quatrain. The second stanza moves from purely empirical imagery to transcendental symbols pertaining to savage Beauty, and does so very compellingly. A great poem indeed.


There’s an audio clip attached to this poem at Poets.org, click on the link and check it out.

God's World- a Millay Poem

God's World

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.



Of the Poem:

I first read this poem last year. It was so powerful a message that I remember exactly- down to the singular most detail of the day- where I was when I read it.

The reason it moved me so deeply is because I've long understood and known the overwhelming presence of Beauty that exists in the world. It's everywhere, crushing in all around me to the point that I feel unable to talk or move or think ... I see it in the trees, I smell it in the air, I feel it permeate dark summer nights. Beauty's everywhere. Everywhere!

It's a mystifying aspect of existence I know all too well, and it sits perpetually by just waiting for me to pause and acknowledge it, and the second I do- every time without fail!- it breaks in on me with the force of a sacred deluge, and inundates everything I am to the point of irreversible rapture ...

I believe this is the point of Millay's poem: Beauty's overwhelming glory made manifest in this humble world. In the first stanza she can't seem to get enough of it, but by the end of the second stanza she doubts whether she can take in anymore of its incredible glory: My soul is all but out of me, she says, and continues:

let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

Should another autumn leaf fall or bird sing she feels she'll loose herself entirely in the beauty of it.

When I read this poem I’m reminded of William Wordsworth’s Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802, and how amazed he was that there are those in the world who hardly recognize the beauty that surrounds them:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty

I’m also reminds of a beautiful quote from a scene out of American Beauty:

“It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.”

With that I’d like to say Happy Birthday to this poet, whose date of birth was on February 22, 1892 … Happy Birthday, Edna St. Vincent Millay. We'll see you on the other side.


*****

Poetic Parameters:

Rhyme Scheme: abbccaa (per stanza)

Meter: Mixed- Lines 1 and 4 through 7 are done in pentameter (i.e. five metric feet), while lines 2 and 3 consist of three metric feet (or trimeter)

Stanza: Septet (i.e. 7 lines)

Edna St. Vincent Millay*

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

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.

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).

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.


*Biography from Poets.org