Edna st.vincent millay biography

American poet (–)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, – October 19, ) was an American lyrical poet bracket playwright. Millay was a well social figure and noted reformer in New York City away the Roaring Twenties and onwards. She wrote much of cause prose and hackwork verse governed by the pseudonymNancy Boyd.

Millay won the Pulitzer Prize for Metrical composition for her poem "Ballad mimic the Harp-Weaver"; she was significance first woman and second in my opinion to win the award. Appoint , Millay was the ordinal person and the second eve to be awarded the Rime Medal for her lifetime imposition to American poetry.

Millay was highly regarded during much assault her lifetime, with the salient literary critic Edmund Wilson profession her "one of the single poets writing in English bring into being our time who have achieved to anything like the standing of great literary figures.''^[1] Saturate the s, her critical name began to decline, as modernist critics dismissed her work make a choice its use of traditional elegiac forms and subject matter, monitor contrast to modernism's exhortation nod "make it new." However, class rise of feminist literary condemnation in the s and unpitying revived an interest in Millay's works.^[2]

Early life

Millay was born Edna Vincent Millay in Rockland, Maine, on February 22, Her parents were Cora Lounella Buzelle, a-okay custom hair stylist and qualifications nurse for private families, impressive Henry Tolman Millay, a living insurance agent and teacher who would later become a overseeing of schools.

Her middle term derives from St. Vincent's Clinic in New York City, annulus her uncle's life had archaic saved from an accident rest sea just before her birth.^[3] Encouraged to read the liberal arts at home, she was as well rebellious to make a good of formal education, but she won poetry prizes from let down early age.

Edna's mother sham a Congregational church.^[4] In , Cora officially divorced Millay's pa for financial irresponsibility and maid abuse. They had already antediluvian separated for some years. Orator and Edna kept a symbol correspondence for many years, on the other hand he never re-entered the kindred. Cora and her three children – Edna (who called "Vincent"),Norma Lounella, and Kathleen Kalloch (born ) – moved bring forth town to town, living newest poverty and surviving various illnesses.

Cora travelled with a casket full of classic literature, as well as Shakespeare and Milton, which she read to her children. Description family settled in a little house on the property catch Cora's aunt in Camden, Maine, where Millay would write greatness first of the poems rove would bring her literary villainy. The family's house in City was "between the mountains extremity the sea where baskets disregard apples and drying herbs distort the porch mingled their scents with those of the near pine woods."^[6]

The three sisters were independent and outspoken, which outspoken not always sit well extinct the authority figures in their lives.

Millay's grade school chief, offended by her frank aspect, refused to call her Vincent. Instead, he called her moisten any woman's name that in progress with a V. At City High School, Millay began flourishing her literary talents, starting condescension the school's literary magazine, The Megunticook.

At 14, she won the St. Nicholas Gold Clue for poetry, and by 15, she had published her metrics in the popular children's paper St. Nicholas, the Camden Herald, and the high-profile anthology Current Literature.^[7]

Emerging fame and college education

Millay's fame began in when, putrefy the age of 20, she entered her poem "Renascence" spartan a poetry contest in The Lyric Year.

The backer take up the contest, Ferdinand P. Earle, chose Millay as the champ after sorting through thousands healthy entries, reading only two form apiece. Earle sent a note informing Millay of her achieve mastery before consulting with the extra judges, who had previously advocate separately agreed on a customary for a winner to sift down the massive flood clever entrants.^[9] According to the extant judges, the winning poem confidential to exhibit social relevance, celebrated "Renascence" did not.

The entryway of Orrick Glenday Johns, "Second Avenue," was about the "squalid scenes" Johns saw on Eldridge Street and lower Second Guide on New York's Lower Get one\'s bearings Side.^[10] Millay ultimately placed dwelling-place. The press drew attention give somebody no option but to the fact that the Millays were a family of man of the people women living in poverty.

Now the three winners were soldiers, some people felt that classism and classism were a edge in Millay's poem coming descent fourth place.^[11]

Controversy in newspaper columns and editorial pages launched integrity careers of Millay and Artist. Johns, who was receiving abominate mail, conceded that he brainstorm her poem was better.

"The award was as much eminence embarrassment to me as regular triumph," he said. Johns blunt not attend the awards The second-prize winner offered Poetess his $ prize money.^[12] Anxiety the immediate aftermath of authority Lyric Year controversy, wealthy portal patron Caroline B. Dow heard Millay reciting her poetry tell off playing the piano at character Whitehall Inn in Camden, Maine and was so impressed put off she offered to pay have a thing about Millay's education at Vassar College.^[13]

Millay entered Vassar College in pressurize age Her attendance at Vassar, which she called a "hell-hole",^[14][15] became a strain to torment due to its strict variety.

Before she attended college, Poetess had a liberal home being that included smoking, drinking, discharge gin rummy, and flirting be men. Vassar, on the following hand, expected its students comprise be refined and live according to their status as lush ladies.^[16] Millay often would keen be formally reprimanded out have a good time respect of her work.^[14][15] Smash into the end of her high-flying year in , the license voted to suspend Millay indefinitely; however, in response to unornamented petition by her peers, she was allowed to graduate.^[14][15] She was a prominent campus penman, becoming a regular contributor give an inkling of The Vassar Miscellany.

She difficult to understand relationships with many fellow grade during her time there dominant kept scrapbooks including drafts publicize plays written during the period.^[17] While at school, she confidential several romantic relationships with body of men, including Edith Wynne Matthison, who would go on to develop an actress in silent films.^[18]

Move to Greenwich Village

After she gradatory from Vassar in , Poetess moved to New York Bit.

She lived in Greenwich Hamlet just as it was acceptable known as a bohemian writers' haven. She resided in well-organized number of places, including systematic house owned by the Crimson Lane Theatre^[19] and 75½ Bedford Street, renowned for being rectitude narrowest^[20][21] in New York City.^[22]

While in New York City, Poetess was openly bisexual, developing brief relationships with men and women.^[16] The critic Floyd Dell wrote that Millay was "a volatile young woman, with a fortune pair of dancing slippers reprove a mouth like a valentine."^[6] She maintained relationships with The Masseseditor Floyd Dell and judge Edmund Wilson, both of whom proposed marriage to her captivated were refused.^[23][16] Counted among Millay's close friends were the writers Witter Bynner, Arthur Davison Ficke, and Susan Glaspell.

In , she wrote the anti-war hurl Aria da Capo, which marked her sister Norma Millay catch the Provincetown Playhouse in Another York City.^[25] In , Poetess would write The Lamp spreadsheet the Bell, her first disorganize drama, at the request get through the drama department of Vassar.^[23] While establishing her career monkey a poet, Millay initially played with the Provincetown Players prejudice Macdougal Street and the Theatre arts Guild.

In , Millay bear others founded the Cherry Series Theatre^[26] "to continue the handiwork of experimental drama."^[27]

During her abide in Greenwich Village, Millay politic to use her poetry need her feminist activism. She much went into detail about topics others found taboo, such importance a wife leaving her deposit in the middle of blue blood the gentry night.^[16] Millay's collection A Hardly any Figs From Thistles drew wrangling for its exploration of person sexuality and feminism.^[28] She spoken for in highly successful nationwide go in which she offered the upper classes readings of her poetry.

To fund her days in the Township, Millay wrote short stories convey Ainslee's Magazine.

As an brain and a canny protector souk her identity as a maker, she insisted on publishing that more mass-appeal work under blue blood the gentry pseudonym Nancy Boyd.^[2][6]

Pulitzer Prize, addon, and purchase of Steepletop

See also: Steepletop

In January , Millay take a trip to Paris, where she fall down and befriended the sculptors Thelma Wood^[30] and Constantin Brâncuși, lensman Man Ray, had affairs counterpart journalists George Slocombe and Toilet Carter, and became pregnant impervious to a man named Daubigny.

She secured a marriage license on the contrary instead returned to New England where her mother Cora helped induce an abortion with bugloss, as recommended in her subside copy of Culpeper's Complete Herbal. Possibly as a result, Poetess was frequently ill and flimsy for much of the incoming four years.

Millay won the Publisher Prize for Poetry in backer "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver."^[32] She was the first lady to win the poetry liking, though two women (Sara Poet in and Margaret Widdemer etch ) won special prizes stick up for their poetry prior to loftiness establishment of the award.^[33] Featureless , literary critic Harriet Actress labeled Millay “the greatest lassie poet since Sappho."^[34]

After experiencing consummate remarkable attention to her alongside her illness, she married year-old Eugen Jan Boissevain in Boissevain was the widower of experience lawyer and war correspondentInez Milholland, a political icon Millay abstruse met during her time cutting remark Vassar.

A self-proclaimed feminist, Boissevain supported Millay's career and took primary care of domestic responsibilities. Both Millay and Boissevain challenging other lovers throughout their generation marriage. For Millay, one specified significant relationship was with picture poet George Dillon, a partisan 14 years her junior, whom she met in at get someone on the blower of her readings at rendering University of Chicago.

Their affair inspired the sonnets in distinction collection Fatal Interview, which she published in ^[36]

In , Boissevain and Millay bought Steepletop in effect Austerlitz, New York, which esoteric once been a acre (&#;ha) blueberry farm.^[37] They built nifty barn (from a Sears Roebuck kit), and then a chirography cabin and a tennis pursue.

Millay grew her own start in a small garden.^[37][38] Afterward, they bought Ragged Island lecture in Casco Bay, Maine, as out summer retreat. Frequently having be of importance with the servants they full, Millay wrote, "The only general public I really hate are staff.

They are not really soul in person bodily beings at all."^[40]

Millay was certified by the Metropolitan Opera Piedаterre to write a libretto target an opera composed by Deems Taylor. The result, The King's Henchman, drew on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's account of Eadgar, Pretty of Wessex.

The opera began its production in to tall praise; The New York Times described it as "the chief effectively and artistically wrought Land opera that has reached high-mindedness stage."^[41][6]

In August , Millay, result with a number of mocker writers, was arrested while objection the impending executions of justness Italian American anarchist duo Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

Entitlement to her status, she was able to meet with magnanimity governor of Massachusetts, Alvan Orderly. Fuller, to plead for dialect trig retrial. Her failure to oppose the executions would be exceptional catalyst for her politicization hem in her later works, beginning staunch the poem "Justice Denied Remit Massachusetts" about the case.^[42]

Accident subject war effort

Millay was staying disagree the Sanibel Palms Hotel considering that, on May 2, , swell fire started after a fuel heater on the second nautical exploded.

Everything was destroyed, containing the only copy of Millay's long verse poem, Conversation lips Midnight, and a s poesy collection written by the Papist poet Catullus of the greatest century BC.^[43] She would make public on to rewrite Conversation cherished Midnight from memory and unloose it the following year.^[43][2]

In rank summer of , Millay was riding in a station car when the door suddenly swung open, and Millay “was hurled out into the pitch-darknessand uncontained for some distance down a-one rocky gully."^[44] The accident fully damaged nerves in her needle, requiring frequent surgeries and hospitalizations, and at least daily doses of morphine.

Millay lived excellence rest of her life play a role "constant pain".

Despite her accident, Poetess was sufficiently alarmed by honesty rise of fascism to transcribe against it. During World Hostilities I, she had been boss dedicated and active pacifist; in spite of that, in , she advocated act the U.S.

to enter dignity war against the Axis gift became an ardent supporter good deal the war effort. She after worked with the Writers' Armed conflict Board to create propaganda, plus poetry.^[46] Millay's reputation in 1 circles was damaged by shrewd war work. Merle Rubin celebrated, "She seems to have deceived more flak from the bookish critics for supporting democracy top Ezra Pound did for maintenance fascism."^[47]

In in The New Dynasty Times Magazine, Millay mourned ethics destruction of the Czech limited Lidice.

Nazi forces had raze Lidice, slaughtered its male community and scattered its surviving inhabitants in retaliation for the butchery of Reinhard Heydrich. Millay wrote: "The whole world holds foundation its arms today / Grandeur murdered village of Lidice, Memorandum Like the murdered body bring into the light a little child."^[6] This initially would serve as the base of her page work "Murder of Lidice," published by Player and Brothers in ^[48][49] Interpretation poem loosely served as honesty basis of the MGM layer Hitler's Madman.^[48][49]

Millay was critical inducing capitalism and sympathetic to bolshevik ideals, which she labeled monkey "of a free and the same society", but she did band identify as a communist.^{[50][51]:&#;&#;} She told Grace Hamilton King buy that she had been "almost a fellow-traveller with the marxist idea as far as voyage went along with the leninist idea."^[51]:&#;&#;

Despite the excellent sales noise her books in the callous, her declining reputation, constant analeptic bills, and frequent demands free yourself of her mentally ill sister Kathleen meant that for most pale her last years, Millay was in debt to her lousy publisher.

Author Daniel Mark Sculpturer also concludes from her packages that Millay developed a guilty verdict for thoroughbredhorse-racing, and spent unwarranted of her income investing hold a racing stable of which she had quietly become distinction owner.

Post-war and death

Although her gratuitous and reputation declined during illustriousness war years, possibly due hopefulness a morphine addiction she obtained following her accident,^[15] she later sought treatment for it extract was successfully rehabilitated.^[53] Boissevain grand mal in of lung cancer, pass Millay to live alone all for the last year of say no to life.

Her final collection method poems was published posthumously in that the volume "Mine the Harvest." The title sonnet recalls time out career:^[54]

Those hours when happy noontide were my estate, —
Non-negotiable, as proper, for the consequent in line,
Yet mine authority harvest, and the title take stock of —
Those acres, fertile, dispatch the furrows straight,
From which the lark would rise — all of my late
Enchantments, still, in brilliant colours, pulsation,

Millay died at her tad on October 19, , resort to age She had fallen sign the stairs and was strong with a broken neck valuation eight hours after her termination.

Her physician reported that she had suffered a heart robbery following a coronary occlusion.^[6] She is buried alongside her partner at Steepletop, Austerlitz, New York.^[57]

Legacy

After her death, The New Royalty Times described her as "an idol of the younger procreation during the glorious early era of Greenwich Village" and in the same way "one of the greatest Earth poets of her time."^[6]Thomas Athletic said that America had unite great attractions: the skyscraper snowball the poetry of Edna Reunion.

Vincent Millay.^[58] The poet Richard Wilbur asserted that Millay "wrote some of the best sonnets of the century."^[59][60]

Nancy Milford obtainable a biography of the versifier in , Savage Beauty: Depiction Life of Edna St Vincent Millay. Millay's sister, Norma Poetess (then her only living relative), offered Milford access to blue blood the gentry poet's papers based on afflict successful biography of F.

Adventurer Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda. Milford too edited and wrote an embark on for a collection of Millay's poems called The Selected Ode of Edna St. Vincent Millay.^[61] Milford would label Millay rightfully "the herald of the Virgin Woman."^[62]

A New York Times argument of Milford noted that "readers of poetry probably dismiss Poetess as mediocre," and noted depart within 20 years of Millay's death, "the public was jittery with what had come constitute seem a poised, genteel emotionalism." However, it concludes that "readers should come away from Milford's book with their understanding operate Millay deepened and charged."^[63]The Virgin York Review of Books entitled Milford's biography "the story work at the life that eclipsed leadership work," and dismissed much presumption Millay's work as "soggy" don "doggerel."^[64]

Millay was named by Par Forum as one of their "31 Icons" of the LGBT History Month.^[65]

Properties, conservation, and memorials

Millay's sister Norma and her deposit, the painter and actor River Frederick Ellis, moved to Steepletop after Millay's death.

In , they established the Millay District for the Arts on digit acres near the house explode barn. After the death marvel at her husband in , Constellation continued to run the document until her death in ^[37] At 17, the poet Column Oliver visited Steepletop and became a close friend of Constellation. She would later live engagement Steepletop off-and-on for seven days and helped to organize Millay's papers.^[66] Mary Oliver herself went on to become a Publisher Prize-winning poet, greatly inspired close to Millay's work.^[67] In , probity state of New York cashed $ million to acquire land (&#;km²) of Steepletop, to affix the land to a close by state forest preserve.

The prize of the sale were spineless by the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society to restore distinction farmhouse and grounds and ride it into a museum. Character museum opened to the bare in the summer of Repair of the house has antediluvian ongoing.^[68][69]

Conservation of Millay's source began in with the sect of the double-house at – Broadway, Rockland, Maine.

Built preparation , Henry T. and Cora B. Millay were the primary tenants of the north inhabit, where Cora gave birth coalesce her first of three sprouts during a February squall.^[70] Determinate as the Singhi Double Homestead, the home was added holiday at the National Register of Traditional Places in not as righteousness poet's birthplace, but as simple "good example" of the "modest double houses" that made set to rights almost 10% of residences solution the largely working-class city in the middle of and the early s.^[71] Like that which fully restored by , onehalf the house will be effusive to honoring Millay's legacy pick up again workshops and classes, while position other half will be rented for income to sustain upkeep and programs.

A writer-in-residence discretion be funded by the Ellis Beauregard Foundation and the Poetess House Rockland.^[72]

Millay is also brave b be accepted in Camden, Maine, where she lived beginning in A play a part of the poet stands unswervingly Harbor Park, which shares better Mt.

Battie the view finance 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 capacity a large skylight: "All Beside oneself could see from where Farcical stood / Was three hold up mountains and a wood; Best performance I turned and looked other way, / And saw troika islands in a bay."^[74] Representation library's Walsh History Center kind contains the scrapbooks created induce Millay's high-school friend, Corinne Longicorn, as well as photos, handwriting, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera.^[75]

In popular culture

Millay has been referenced in popular culture, and sit on work has been the motive for music and drama:

• In , Millay's poem "Conscientious Objector" was put to music stomachturning Mary Travers (of Peter, Unenviable and Mary) on her jotter Morning Glory.^[76]
• In , American fabricator Ivana Marburger Themmen used Millay's text for her composition Shelter This Candle from the Wind.^[77]
• In July , the United States Postal Service issued an heartrending stamp depicting Millay.^[78]
• Annette Meyers' huggermugger series character Olivia Brown was inspired by Millay.^[79][80]
• In the murkiness A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean (played by Craig Sheffer) recites "First Fig" one-time on a double date exact his brother at the Burning Springs speakeasy.
• In , E.C.

  Schirmer Music published Letters from Edna, a set of eight songs set to the text grounding letters written by Millay treaty colleagues and family, by Inhabitant composer Juliana Hall.^[81]

• In October , Scottish harpist Maeve Gilchrist^[82] encounter an album entitled The Harpweaver, which owes its origin be selected for Millay's poem "The Ballad entrap the Harp-Weaver".^[83]
• In , Laura Prepon read "Dirge Without Music" blackhead the movie The Hero.
• In , Hildegard Publishing released Six Songs on Poems of Edna Slam into.

  Vincent Millay by American framer Margaret Bonds.^[84]

• In , Meryl Actress recited one of her poetry, “Recuerdo”, in season 3 sheet 5 of Only Murders eliminate the Building, as her sixth sense Loretta Durkin.

Works

Main article: Edna Gray. Vincent Millay bibliography

This section needs expansion. You can help unused adding to it. (January )

Millay wrote shake up verse dramas early in yield career, including:

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

"Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare" () is an homage to integrity geometry of Euclid.^[86]"Renascence" and "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver" preparation considered her finest poems.^{[citation needed]}

See also

References

Further reading