(More than 180 sonnets selected from Millay's books of poe...)
More than 180 sonnets selected from Millay's books of poems -- including 20 sonnets from Mine the Harvest not contained in previous editions of her Collected Sonnets -- are brought together in this new, expanded edition.
An introduction by Norma Millay, written expressly for this volume, focuses on examples of the poet's variations in sonnet structure. Here is the voice of Millay, whose prophetic vision, devotion to freedom, and intellectual daring combine with her mastery of the sonnet form to speak eloquently for the human spirit.
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My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the nigh...)
My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends It gives a lovely light!
First Fig from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)
The 1956 Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay finds new life in this beautiful new P.S. edition from Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Alongside Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and E. E. Cummings, Millay remains among the most celebrated poets of the early twentieth century for her uniquely lyrical explorations of love, individuality, and artistic expression. This invaluable compendium of her work is not only an essential addition to any collection of the worlds most moving and memorable poetry but an unprecedented look into the life of Millay. An extensive P.S. section includes personal letters, never-before-seen photographs, information about Millays homestead at Steepletop, and an original essay by leading Millay scholar Holly Peppe.
(These unique and beautiful lyrics -- over two hundred of ...)
These unique and beautiful lyrics -- over two hundred of them -- were selected by Edna St. Vincent Millay herself and represent the major portion of her lifework.
Their musical perfection, emotional power, and superb, delicate workmanship have made Edna St. Vincent Millay one of America's great poets.
The Works of Edna St. Vincent Millay (6 Books With Active Table of Contents)
(This collection gathers together the works by Edna St. Vi...)
This collection gathers together the works by Edna St. Vincent Millay in a single, convenient, high quality, and extremely low priced Kindle volume!
Poems:
Renascence and other poems, A Few Figs from Thistles: Poems and Sonnetts, Second April, The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems
Drama:
Aria da Capo: A Play in One Act, The Lamp and the Bell: A Drama In Five Acts; Written on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Vassar College Alumnae Association
(One of Americas most beloved poets, Edna St. Vincent Mil...)
One of Americas most beloved poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay burst onto the literary scene at a very young age and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. Her passionate lyrics and superbly crafted sonnets have thrilled generations of readers long after the notoriously bohemian lifestyle she led in Greenwich Village in the 1920s ceased to shock them. Millays refreshing frankness and cynicism and her ardent appetite for life still burn brightly on the page more than half a century after her death.
This volume includes the early poems that many consider her best Renascence and The Ballad of the Harp Weaver among themas well as such often-memorized favorites as What lips my lips have kissed and First Fig (My candle burns at both ends . . .). The poets most famous verse drama, the one-act antiwar fable Aria da Capo, is included here as well.
Renascence and Other Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
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The poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay (18921950) have b...)
The poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay (18921950) have been long admired for the lyric beauty that is especially characteristic of her early works. "Renascence," the first of her poems to bring her public acclaim, was written when she was nineteen. Now one of the best-known American poems, it is a fervent and moving account of spiritual rebirth.
In 1917, "Renascence" was incorporated into her first volume of poetry, which is reprinted here, complete and unabridged, from the original edition. The 23 works in this first volume are fired with the romantic and independent spirit of youth that Edna St. Vincent Millay came to personify. In addition to "Renascence," this volume includes 16 other early lyric poems "Interim," "Sorrow," "Ashes of Life," "Three Songs of Shattering," "The Dream," "When the Year Grows Old," and others, including six sonnets, to which Millay brought great distinction throughout her career.
The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Modern Library Classics)
(One of Americas most celebrated poetsand winner of the ...)
One of Americas most celebrated poetsand winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1923Edna St. Vincent Millay defined a generation with her passionate lyrics and intoxicating voice of liberation. Edited by Millay biographer Nancy Milford, this Modern Library Paperback Classics collection captures the poets unique spirit in works like Renascence and Other Poems, A Few Figs from This-tles, and Second April, as well as in The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver and eight sonnets from the early twenties. As Milford writes in her Introduction, These are the poems that made Edna St. Vincent Millays reputation when she was young. Saucy, insolent, flip, and defiant, her little verses sting the page.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet and playwright.
Background
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, on Feburary 27, 1892 to Cora Lounella Buzelle, a nurse, and Henry Tolman Millay, a schoolteacher who would later become a superintendent of schools. Her middle name derives from St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, where her uncle's life had been saved just before her birth.
Education
She was educated in her native state. One of her juvenile poems appeared in St. Nicholas, and she delivered a verse essay at high school graduation. "Renascence, " a long poem written when she was 19, appeared in The Lyric Year (1912), an anthology, and remains a favorite. A wealthy friend, impressed with Edna's talent, helped her attend Vassar College.
Career
Following her graduation in 1917, Millay settled in New York's Greenwich Village and began to support herself by writing. Her impact was immediate with her first volume, Renascence (1917). She also wrote short stories under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. A Few Figs from Thistles appeared in 1920. In 1921 she issued Second April and three short plays, one of which, Aria da Capo, is a delicate but effective satire on war. In 1923 Millay published The Harp Weaver and Other Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. In 1925 she and her husband bought a farm near Austerlitz, N. Y. Millay participated in the defense of the alleged anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. In 1925 she was commissioned to write an opera with composer Deems Taylor; The King's Henchman (1927) was the most successful American opera to that time. That year, after the final sentencing of Sacco and Vanzetti, she wrote "Justice Denied in Massachusetts, " a poem, and also contributed to Fear, a pamphlet on the case. Millay issued Buck in the Snow (1928), Fatal Interview (1931), and Wine from These Grapes (1934). She tried a dramatic dialogue on the state of the world in Conversation at Midnight (1937), but the subject was beyond her grasp. She returned to the lyric mode in Huntsman, What Quarry (1939). Carelessly expressed outrage at fascism detracted from Make Bright the Arrows (1940); The Murder of Lidice (1942) was a sincere but somewhat strident response to the Nazis' obliteration of a Czechoslovakian town. She was losing her audience; Collected Sonnets (1941) and Collected Lyrics (1943) did not win it back. Millay's last years were dogged by illness and loss. Friends died, and her husband's income disappeared when the Nazis invaded Holland. In 1944 a nervous breakdown hospitalized her for several months. Her husband died in 1949; on October 19, 1950, she followed him. Some of her last verse appeared posthumously in Mine the Harvest (1954). Miss Millay's virtues were in her poems speaking frankly about sex, the liberated woman, and social justice. Though she wrote in traditional forms, her subject matter, her mixed tone of insouciance, disillusionment, courage, and intensity and her lyric gifts were highly appreciated in her time.
Quotations:
"I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one. "
"Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. "
"And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you all through my life?-sharing my fire, my bed, Sharing-oh, worst of all things!-the same head?- And, when I feed myself, feeding you too?"
"I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes. "
"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell. "
"I drank at every vine, the last was like the first. I came upon no wine so wonderful as thirst. "
"I do not think there is a woman in whom the roots of passion shoot deeper than in me. "
Connections
In 1923 she married 43-year-old Eugen Jan Boissevain, the widower of the labor lawyer and war correspondent Inez Milholland, a political icon Millay had met during her time at Vassar. Both Millay and Boissevain had other lovers throughout their twenty-six-year marriage. For Millay, a significant such relationship was with the poet George Dillon. She met Dillon at one of her readings at the University of Chicago in 1928 where he was a student.