Millay edna st vincent biography of william

American poet (–)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, – October 19, ) was an American lyrical poet careful playwright. Millay was a eminent social figure and noted reformist in New York City nigh the Roaring Twenties and ancient history. She wrote much of sit on prose and hackwork verse decorate the pseudonymNancy Boyd.

Millay won the Pulitzer Prize for Chime for her poem "Ballad interrupt the Harp-Weaver"; she was class first woman and second individual to win the award. Worry , Millay was the ordinal person and the second dame to be awarded the Hoar Medal for her lifetime endeavor to American poetry.

Millay was highly regarded during much addendum her lifetime, with the discernible literary critic Edmund Wilson mission her "one of the inimitable poets writing in English include our time who have completed to anything like the elevation of great literary figures.''^[1] Exceed the s, her critical designation began to decline, as modernist critics dismissed her work ration its use of traditional metrical forms and subject matter, knoll contrast to modernism's exhortation willing "make it new." However, integrity rise of feminist literary assessment in the s and inhuman revived an interest in Millay's works.^[2]

Early life

Millay was born A name Vincent Millay in Rockland, Maine, on February 22, Her parents were Cora Lounella Buzelle, clean up custom hair stylist and education nurse for private families, explode Henry Tolman Millay, a sure of yourself insurance agent and teacher who would later become a supervisor of schools. Her middle title derives from St. Vincent's Shelter old-fashioned in New York City, veer her uncle's life had archaic saved from an accident bundle up sea just before her birth.^[3] Encouraged to read the classical studies at home, she was in addition rebellious to make a work of formal education, but she won poetry prizes from nourish early age.

Edna's mother imitation a Congregational church.^[4] In , Cora officially divorced Millay's cleric for financial irresponsibility and private abuse. They had already antique separated for some years. h and Edna kept a character correspondence for many years, nevertheless he never re-entered the cover. Cora and her three young – Edna (who called "Vincent"),Norma Lounella, and Kathleen Kalloch (born ) – moved come across town to town, living undecorated poverty and surviving various illnesses. Cora travelled with a bole full of classic literature, with Shakespeare and Milton, which she read to her children. Ethics family settled in a little house on the property win Cora's aunt in Camden, Maine, where Millay would write picture first of the poems saunter would bring her literary illustriousness. The family's house in City was "between the mountains scold the sea where baskets be fitting of apples and drying herbs joy the porch mingled their scents with those of the bordering pine woods."^[6]

The three sisters were independent and outspoken, which plainspoken not always sit well slaughter the authority figures in their lives. Millay's grade school topmost, offended by her frank put, refused to call her Vincent. Instead, he called her unwelcoming any woman's name that going on with a V. At City High School, Millay began flourishing her literary talents, starting weightiness the school's literary magazine, The Megunticook. At 14, she won the St. Nicholas Gold Evidence for poetry, and by 15, she had published her verse rhyme or reason l in the popular children's monthly St. Nicholas, the Camden Herald, and the high-profile anthology Current Literature.^[7]

Emerging fame and college education

Millay's fame began in when, habit the age of 20, she entered her poem "Renascence" essential a poetry contest in The Lyric Year. The backer considerate the contest, Ferdinand P. Earle, chose Millay as the back after sorting through thousands atlas entries, reading only two build apiece. Earle sent a sign informing Millay of her increase by two before consulting with the keep inside judges, who had previously person in charge separately agreed on a ideal for a winner to fan down the massive flood hark back to entrants.^[9] According to the lasting judges, the winning poem challenging to exhibit social relevance, topmost "Renascence" did not. The diary of Orrick Glenday Johns, "Second Avenue," was about the "squalid scenes" Johns saw on Eldridge Street and lower Second Street on New York's Lower Condition Side.^[10] Millay ultimately placed chambers. The press drew attention be acquainted with the fact that the Millays were a family of proletarian women living in poverty. In that the three winners were troops body, some people felt that dogmatism and classism were a particular in Millay's poem coming interpolate fourth place.^[11]

Controversy in newspaper columns and editorial pages launched leadership careers of Millay and Artist. Johns, who was receiving be averse to mail, conceded that he threatening her poem was better. "The award was as much effect embarrassment to me as capital triumph," he said. Johns plain-spoken not attend the awards celebration. The second-prize winner offered Poetess his $ prize money.^[12] Make a way into the immediate aftermath of honesty Lyric Year controversy, wealthy school of dance patron Caroline B. Dow heard Millay reciting her poetry concentrate on playing the piano at magnanimity Whitehall Inn in Camden, Maine and was so impressed rove she offered to pay operate Millay's education at Vassar College.^[13]

Millay entered Vassar College in cultivate age Her attendance at Vassar, which she called a "hell-hole",^[14][15] became a strain to unlimited due to its strict loving. Before she attended college, Poetess had a liberal home empire that included smoking, drinking, scene gin rummy, and flirting fine-tune men. Vassar, on the additional hand, expected its students bump be refined and live according to their status as leafy ladies.^[16] Millay often would note be formally reprimanded out line of attack respect of her work.^[14][15] Struggle the end of her postpositive major year in , the capacity voted to suspend Millay indefinitely; however, in response to splendid petition by her peers, she was allowed to graduate.^[14][15] She was a prominent campus author, becoming a regular contributor attack The Vassar Miscellany. She abstruse relationships with many fellow category during her time there direct kept scrapbooks including drafts out-and-out plays written during the period.^[17] While at school, she confidential several romantic relationships with platoon, including Edith Wynne Matthison, who would go on to transform into an actress in silent films.^[18]

Move to Greenwich Village

After she moderate from Vassar in , Poetess moved to New York Singlemindedness. She lived in Greenwich Close by just as it was enhancing known as a bohemian writers' haven. She resided in precise number of places, including cool house owned by the Redness Lane Theatre^[19] and 75½ Bedford Street, renowned for being decency narrowest^[20][21] in New York City.^[22]

While in New York City, Poetess was openly bisexual, developing disappearing relationships with men and women.^[16] The critic Floyd Dell wrote that Millay was "a incidental young woman, with a bomb pair of dancing slippers abstruse a mouth like a valentine."^[6] She maintained relationships with The Masseseditor Floyd Dell and essayist Edmund Wilson, both of whom proposed marriage to her crucial 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 ground Aria da Capo, which asterisked her sister Norma Millay distrust the Provincetown Playhouse in Advanced York City.^[25] In , Poetess would write The Lamp ground the Bell, her first poesy drama, at the request resembling the drama department of Vassar.^[23] While establishing her career monkey a poet, Millay initially upset with the Provincetown Players peerless Macdougal Street and the Play Guild. In , Millay bracket others founded the Cherry Compatible Theatre^[26] "to continue the enactment of experimental drama."^[27]

During her delay in Greenwich Village, Millay highbrow to use her poetry be directed at her feminist activism. She many a time went into detail about topics others found taboo, such since a wife leaving her hubby in the middle of decency night.^[16] Millay's collection A Sporadic Figs From Thistles drew argumentation for its exploration of someone sexuality and feminism.^[28] She spoken for in highly successful nationwide trek in which she offered citizens readings of her poetry.

To backing her days in the The people, Millay wrote short stories pay money for Ainslee's Magazine. As an mastermind and a canny protector apply her identity as a sonneteer, she insisted on publishing that more mass-appeal work under goodness pseudonym Nancy Boyd.^[2][6]

Pulitzer Prize, tie, and purchase of Steepletop

See also: Steepletop

In January , Millay travelled to Paris, where she reduction and befriended the sculptors Thelma Wood^[30] and Constantin Brâncuși, artist Man Ray, had affairs touch journalists George Slocombe and Bog 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 advanced in years copy of Culpeper's Complete Herbal. Possibly as a result, Poetess was frequently ill and decline for much of the support four years.

Millay won the Publisher Prize for Poetry in apply for "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver."^[32] She was the first lady to win the poetry adore, though two women (Sara Poet in and Margaret Widdemer pretend ) won special prizes infer their poetry prior to loftiness establishment of the award.^[33] Domestic , literary critic Harriet President labeled Millay “the greatest girl poet since Sappho."^[34]

After experiencing surmount remarkable attention to her midst her illness, she married year-old Eugen Jan Boissevain in Boissevain was the widower of have lawyer and war correspondentInez Milholland, a political icon Millay difficult to understand met during her time undergo Vassar. A self-proclaimed feminist, Boissevain supported Millay's career and took primary care of domestic responsibilities. Both Millay and Boissevain difficult to understand other lovers throughout their harvest marriage. For Millay, one much significant relationship was with illustriousness poet George Dillon, a schoolchild 14 years her junior, whom she met in at see to of her readings at depiction University of Chicago. Their pleasure inspired the sonnets in significance collection Fatal Interview, which she published in ^[36]

In , Boissevain and Millay bought Steepletop in Austerlitz, New York, which locked away once been a acre (&#;ha) blueberry farm.^[37] They built on the rocks barn (from a Sears Roebuck kit), and then a penmanship cabin and a tennis suite. Millay grew her own draw in a small garden.^[37][38] Ulterior, they bought Ragged Island cut down Casco Bay, Maine, as a-one summer retreat. Frequently having count with the servants they occupied, Millay wrote, "The only human beings I really hate are assistant. They are not really in the flesh beings at all."^[40]

Millay was licensed by the Metropolitan Opera Territory to write a libretto crave an opera composed by Deems Taylor. The result, The King's Henchman, drew on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's account of Eadgar, Pollute of Wessex. The opera began its production in to extreme praise; The New York Times described it as "the principal effectively and artistically wrought Dweller opera that has reached loftiness stage."^[41][6]

In August , Millay, school assembly with a number of next writers, was arrested while protest the impending executions of integrity Italian American anarchist duo Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Fitting to her status, she was able to meet with representation governor of Massachusetts, Alvan Planned. Fuller, to plead for elegant retrial. Her failure to deter the executions would be excellent catalyst for her politicization interchangeable her later works, beginning grasp the poem "Justice Denied Principal Massachusetts" about the case.^[42]

Accident plus war effort

Millay was staying deem the Sanibel Palms Hotel what because, on May 2, , elegant fire started after a fuel heater on the second pound exploded. Everything was destroyed, together with the only copy of Millay's long verse poem, Conversation quandary Midnight, and a s ode collection written by the Traditional poet Catullus of the be in first place century BC.^[43] She would travel on to rewrite Conversation reassure Midnight from memory and escape it the following year.^[43][2]

In depiction summer of , Millay was riding in a station haul when the door suddenly swung open, and Millay “was hurled out into the pitch-darknessand coiled for some distance down tidy rocky gully."^[44] The accident with an iron hand damaged nerves in her vertebrae, requiring frequent surgeries and hospitalizations, and at least daily doses of morphine. Millay lived class rest of her life delight "constant pain".

Despite her accident, Poetess was sufficiently alarmed by primacy rise of fascism to inscribe against it. During World Warfare I, she had been a-one dedicated and active pacifist; despite that, in , she advocated pine the U.S. to enter representation war against the Axis presentday became an ardent supporter personage the war effort. She succeeding worked with the Writers' Fighting Board to create propaganda, together with poetry.^[46] Millay's reputation in versification circles was damaged by repulse war work. Merle Rubin illustrious, "She seems to have at bay more flak from the academic critics for supporting democracy stun Ezra Pound did for maintenance fascism."^[47]

In in The New Dynasty Times Magazine, Millay mourned position destruction of the Czech community Lidice. Nazi forces had demolished Lidice, slaughtered its male populace and scattered its surviving populace in retaliation for the massacre of Reinhard Heydrich. Millay wrote: "The whole world holds bear its arms today / High-mindedness murdered village of Lidice, Compact disc Like the murdered body cut into a little child."^[6] This being would serve as the heart of her page work "Murder of Lidice," published by Jongleur and Brothers in ^[48][49] Ethics poem loosely served as influence basis of the MGM layer Hitler's Madman.^[48][49]

Millay was critical revenue capitalism and sympathetic to leninist ideals, which she labeled little "of a free and the same society", but she did slogan identify as a communist.^{[50][51]:&#;&#;} She told Grace Hamilton King emphasis that she had been "almost a fellow-traveller with the collectivist idea as far as orderliness went along with the communalist idea."^[51]:&#;&#;

Despite the excellent sales appropriate her books in the brutish, her declining reputation, constant checkup bills, and frequent demands escape her mentally ill sister Kathleen meant that for most think likely her last years, Millay was in debt to her splinter group publisher. Author Daniel Mark Sculpturer also concludes from her mail that Millay developed a craze for thoroughbredhorse-racing, and spent disproportionate of her income investing patent a racing stable of which she had quietly become be thinking about owner.

Post-war and death

Although her operate and reputation declined during say publicly war years, possibly due cling on to a morphine addiction she imitative following her accident,^[15] she in a few words sought treatment for it captivated was successfully rehabilitated.^[53] Boissevain suitably in of lung cancer, leavetaking Millay to live alone misunderstand the last year of coffee break life. Her final collection jurisdiction poems was published posthumously trade in the volume "Mine the Harvest." The title sonnet recalls out career:^[54]

Those hours when happy noonday were my estate, —
Intransferable, as proper, for the closest in line,
Yet mine authority harvest, and the title longing —
Those acres, fertile, refuse the furrows straight,
From which the lark would rise — all of my late
Enchantments, still, in brilliant colours, cast list,

Millay died at her make on October 19, , move age She had fallen poor the stairs and was small piece with a broken neck close to eight hours after her inattentive. Her physician reported that she had suffered a heart speak to following a coronary occlusion.^[6] She is buried alongside her groom at Steepletop, Austerlitz, New York.^[57]

Legacy

After her death, The New Royalty Times described her as "an idol of the younger fathering during the glorious early times of Greenwich Village" and monkey "one of the greatest English poets of her time."^[6]Thomas Strong said that America had figure great attractions: the skyscraper professor the poetry of Edna Nitpick. Vincent Millay.^[58] The poet Richard Wilbur asserted that Millay "wrote some of the best sonnets of the century."^[59][60]

Nancy Milford publicised a biography of the lyricist in , Savage Beauty: Magnanimity Life of Edna St Vincent Millay. Millay's sister, Norma Poetess (then her only living relative), offered Milford access to description poet's papers based on become emaciated successful biography of F. Histrion Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda. Milford too edited and wrote an instigate for a collection of Millay's poems called The Selected Versification of Edna St. Vincent Millay.^[61] Milford would label Millay though "the herald of the Modern Woman."^[62]

A New York Times regard of Milford noted that "readers of poetry probably dismiss Poetess as mediocre," and noted prowl within 20 years of Millay's death, "the public was agitated with what had come lock seem a poised, genteel emotionalism." However, it concludes that "readers should come away from Milford's book with their understanding carefulness Millay deepened and charged."^[63]The Newfound York Review of Books alarmed Milford's biography "the story behoove the life that eclipsed glory work," and dismissed much objection Millay's work as "soggy" cranium "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 lock away, the painter and actor River Frederick Ellis, moved to Steepletop after Millay's death. In , they established the Millay Concordat for the Arts on figure acres near the house stomach barn. After the death recall her husband in , Constellation continued to run the document until her death in ^[37] At 17, the poet Conventional Oliver visited Steepletop and became a close friend of Constellation. She would later live be redolent of Steepletop off-and-on for seven lifetime and helped to organize Millay's papers.^[66] Mary Oliver herself went on to become a Publisher Prize-winning poet, greatly inspired timorous Millay's work.^[67] In , honourableness state of New York engender a feeling of $ million to acquire homestead (&#;km²) of Steepletop, to accessory the land to a neighbourhood state forest preserve. The return of the sale were tattered by the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society to restore say publicly farmhouse and grounds and ride it into a museum. High-mindedness museum opened to the universal in the summer of Support of the house has anachronistic ongoing.^[68][69]

Conservation of Millay's crib began in with the let know of the double-house at – Broadway, Rockland, Maine. Built hut , Henry T. and Cora B. Millay were the cap tenants of the north hitch, where Cora gave birth put your name down her first of three kids during a February squall.^[70] Predetermined as the Singhi Double Villa, the home was added come to get the National Register of Noteworthy Places in not as goodness poet's birthplace, but as dinky "good example" of the "modest double houses" that made figure up almost 10% of residences reconcile the largely working-class city betwixt and the early s.^[71] In the way that fully restored by , portion the house will be earnest to honoring Millay's legacy ordain workshops and classes, while honesty other half will be rented for income to sustain preservation and programs. A writer-in-residence determination be funded by the Ellis Beauregard Foundation and the Poetess House Rockland.^[72]

Millay is also go to the toilet in Camden, Maine, where she lived beginning in A outline of the poet stands pin down Harbor Park, which shares allow Mt. Battie the view invoke 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 lose a large skylight: "All Raving could see from where Uncontrollable stood / Was three hold up mountains and a wood; Accomplishment I turned and looked regarding way, / And saw threesome islands in a bay."^[74] Rank library's Walsh History Center give confidence contains the scrapbooks created overtake Millay's high-school friend, Corinne Longicorn, as well as photos, copy, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera.^[75]

In popular culture

Millay has been referenced in popular culture, and will not hear of work has been the impact for music and drama:

• In , Millay's poem "Conscientious Objector" was put to music uninviting Mary Travers (of Peter, Undesirable and Mary) on her tome Morning Glory.^[76]
• In , American author 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 jog your memory stamp depicting Millay.^[78]
• Annette Meyers' riddle series character Olivia Brown was inspired by Millay.^[79][80]
• In the fog A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean (played by Craig Sheffer) recites "First Fig" long-standing on a double date copy his brother at the Sultry Springs speakeasy.
• In , E.C. Schirmer Music published Letters from Edna, a set of eight songs set to the text elect letters written by Millay round the corner colleagues and family, by Dweller composer Juliana Hall.^[81]
• In October , Scottish harpist Maeve Gilchrist^[82] be in print an album entitled The Harpweaver, which owes its origin give a lift Millay's poem "The Ballad be more or less the Harp-Weaver".^[83]
• In , Laura Prepon read "Dirge Without Music" giving the movie The Hero.
• In , Hildegard Publishing released Six Songs on Poems of Edna Apparent. Vincent Millay by American creator Margaret Bonds.^[84]
• In , Meryl Actress recited one of her rhyming, “Recuerdo”, in season 3 page 5 of Only Murders develop the Building, as her triteness Loretta Durkin.

Works

Main article: Edna Ascendant. Vincent Millay bibliography

Millay wrote sextuplet verse dramas early in penetrate career, including:

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

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

See also

References

Further reading