Edna St. Vincent Millay Study Guide

The American poet and dramatist who came to personify romantic rebellion and bravado in the 1920s was born in the small town of Rockland, Main on February 22, 1892. She grew up in nearby Camden and her poetry is filled with imagery of the sea and the mountains of her childhood home. When she was eighteen she completed a long poem, “Renascence,” published in The Lyric Year in 1912: the judges put it in fourth place, which caused such a controversy among other poets and readers, the loss literally catapulted her to fame; in fact, the first place winner actually offered her his prize money, so certain was he and others she deserved first place.

One of the quatrains included in her first book, Renascence and Other Poems (1917), One of the quatrains included in her first book, Renascence and Other Poems (1917), almost became a mantra for the Roaring Twenties: “My candle burns at both its ends/It will not last the night/ But ah my foes, and oh my friends/It gives a lovely light.” In addition to her several books of poetry, she wrote some well-produced plays and an opera.

Despite their devotion to one another, her marriage to Dutch businessman Eugen Boissevain did not seem to affect the several love affairs both enjoyed – Edna’s with women as well as men. They purchased a farm in Austerlitz, New York, dubbed Steepletop, where Millay died of a heart attack on October 19, 1950, less than a year after Boissevain died of lung cancer.

Millay was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry (1923). Her sonnets and other poems are particularly noted for their smooth integration of form and contemporaneity. Steepletop is now the Millay Colony for the Arts.

Reading List

Books by Millay

• Renascence and Other Poems, 1917
• A Few Figs from Thistles, 1920
• Aria Da Capo (play), 1920
• Second April, 1921
• The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, 1923
• The Buck in the Snow, 1928
• Fatal Interview (verse play), 1931
• Wine from These Grapes, 1934
• Huntsman, What Quarry?, 1939
• Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Allen R. Macdougall, ed., 1952

Books about Millay

• Brittin, Norman A. Edna St. Vincent Millay (New Haven, CT: College and University Press), 1967. An excellent overview of Millay’s life and works. Compact, dense, incisive, sympathetic yet not idolizing. It gives a deep and broad view of Millay the woman and the poet; I felt her maturing and changing over the years. The insights into several of her poems offers a richer understanding and greater appreciation of them. Highly recommended.
• Cheney, Anne. Millay in Greenwich Village (The University of Alabama Press), 1975. Unique in its emphasis on the major and minor love affairs in Millay’s youth, I often found Cheney’s analyses and conclusions presumptuous and superficial. Billed as a psychological profile, Cheney’s overarching conclusions about Millay’s liaisons sometimes made me laugh right out loud. Not recommended.
• Dash, Joan. A Life of One’s Own, Three gifted women and the men they married (New York: Harper & Row), 1973. Also includes Margaret Sanger and Maria Goeppert-Mayer.
• Eastman, Max. Great Companions, Critical Memoirs of Some Famous Friends (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy), 1942, 1959.
• Gould, Jean. The Poet and Her Book: A Biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co), 1969. A not well-detailed and somewhat adoring telling of the poet’s life, I found the author’s tendency to rephrase Millay’s poetry in an attempt to describe the poet’s feelings rather annoying. She hints at Edna’s love affairs, skirting their intensity and impact on her work. As much seemed left out as put in. The book left me panting for more. Not recommended.
• Gurko, Miriam. Restless Spirit (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.), 1962. An excellent and thorough biography of the poet that fills in many of the blanks other works have left out. Well-written and a good read, Gurko weaves Millay’s works into her life without being presumptuous about meaning or association, but rather astutely guides the reader through the poet’s various stages of growth and change as an artist and a person. Yet, despite my thorough enjoyment and recommendation of this work, I still longed to have certain questions answered, though I realize they may never be: her various “nervous breakdowns”: what were they, really? Was she what today we’d call bipolar? Did she have anxiety attacks? Or was she simply “high strung” and indulged? Her surgeries: specifically, what was her earlier surgery, the one right after she and Eugen married? And later, with the nerve injury in her back, what did they do to try and help her? Then there are her love affairs: with whom? how long? The only obvious ones are with Floyd Dell and Arthur Ficke. While it is clear that other men loved her, we do not know, either from this or other works, if she had sexual affairs with all of them or some of them. And the women in her life. Did she or did she not have sexual affairs with any of them? Also, more on her relationship with her sisters as they matured. And the impact on Edna of her sister Kathleen’s death. I longed, too, for more excerpts from articles and speeches. This is really the first work to date that quoted from any of them, but it was not enough for me. Nonetheless, until and unless something better comes along, this is the best of the lot. (Written 4/20/1998)
• Shafter, Toby. Edna St. Vincent Millay, America’s Best-Loved Poet (New York: Julian Messner, Inc.), 1957. Completely, and appropriately, glossing over the amorous and erotic chapters of her life, this is a biography for youngsters that focuses on Vincent’s growing up years in Camden. It tells a little of her Vassar years as well, but spends barely any time on her later years. Insofar as annals of her early youth, it is, to date, unsurpassed. Still, there is much in it that appears “made up” and inaccurate. It is also rather dated in its language. A more modern and accurate biography for youths is in order. (Written 5/10/1998)