Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a celebrated American poet and playwright, renowned for her lyrical mastery and embodiment of the rebellious spirit of the early 20th century. She achieved national fame as a young woman with her poem "Renascence" and later became the third woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. Her work, characterized by its formal precision and exploration of female sexuality, freedom, and disillusionment, made her a central figure of the Roaring Twenties and a leading voice of the Lost Generation.

Biography

Born in Rockland, Maine, she was raised by her divorced mother, Cora Buzzell Millay, who encouraged her literary pursuits. Her early promise was confirmed when her poem "Renascence" was published in the anthology The Lyric Year in 1912, attracting the attention of a benefactor who financed her education at Vassar College. After graduating in 1917, she moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, immersing herself in its bohemian culture. She lived for a time in a house in Croton-on-Hudson and later traveled extensively in Europe, including stays in Paris and Albania. In 1925, she and her husband purchased a farm they named Steepletop in Austerlitz, New York, which became her primary home for the rest of her life. Her later years were marked by declining health and personal tragedy, including the death of her husband Eugen Jan Boissevain in 1949.

Literary career and style

Millay's career was launched from the heart of the Greenwich Village literary scene, where she was associated with the Provincetown Players and wrote anti-war plays during World War I. She became a popular performer of her own work, giving readings across the United States. Stylistically, she was a master of the sonnet and traditional verse forms, which she used to express modern, often subversive themes of feminist independence, carnal love, and social justice. Her work evolved from the ecstatic romanticism of her youth to a more politically engaged and darker tone in response to events like the Sacco and Vanzetti case and the rise of fascism in Europe. She wrote compellingly for The New Yorker and other major publications, maintaining a significant public persona.

Major works

Her first major collection, Renascence and Other Poems, was published in 1917. She achieved her greatest fame with the volumes A Few Figs from Thistles (1920), known for its flippant and defiant poems, and The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Other significant poetry collections include Second April (1921), Fatal Interview (1931), a sonnet sequence, and the politically charged Huntsman, What Quarry? (1939). Her verse drama Aria da Capo (1919) is a noted anti-war piece, and she authored the libretto for the opera The King's Henchman (1927), with music by Deems Taylor. Her later work includes the patriotic verse drama The Murder of Lidice (1942).

Critical reception and legacy

Upon her emergence, critics like Harriet Monroe and Edmund Wilson hailed her as a brilliant new voice, with Wilson writing about her in his work The Shores of Light. She was celebrated as the "herald of the New Woman" and enjoyed immense popular success. However, with the shift in literary taste toward modernism and the work of poets like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, her formal style fell out of critical favor by the mid-20th century. A major revival of interest, led by feminist scholars, began in the 1970s, re-establishing her importance as a technically gifted poet who challenged social conventions. Her home, Steepletop, is now a museum and designated a National Historic Landmark.

Personal life

Her personal life was as unconventional as her verse. In Greenwich Village, she had numerous romantic relationships with both men and women, including the critic Edmund Wilson and the poet Arthur Davison Ficke. In 1923, she married the Dutch-born importer Eugen Jan Boissevain, who gave up his own career to manage her professional affairs; their open marriage was a subject of fascination. She maintained close, sometimes fraught, relationships with her sisters, Norma Millay and Kathleen Millay, both of whom were also writers. An ardent supporter of progressive causes, she was arrested in 1927 for protesting the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti. Her life at Steepletop was one of relative isolation, dedicated to writing, gardening, and an increasing reliance on alcohol and morphine following a nervous breakdown and spinal injury in the late 1930s.

Category:American poets Category:Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners Category:Vassar College alumni