Edna St Vincent Millay

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Edna St Vincent Millay

Edna St Vincent Millay is widely known as one of the finest poets and writers of all time. She was born in the late nineteenth century in Maine. She spent most of her time in New York, where she attended college. Her mother was a nurse and her father a teacher, but he later went on to become a superintendent of schools. Unfortunately, her parents divorced in 1904 after some years of being separated. Millay and her father kept in touch through letters, but he never became a part of the family again (Shengold 719). Millay, her mother and two sisters then spent their lives in poverty as they moved from town to town. Millay’s mother, Cora, influenced her later life as a writer as she kept classic books such as Shakespeare that she read to her children. Millay lived a full life with a successful career that featured many published works and a Pulitzer award, until her death in 1950.

Millay’s relay life with her family was marred by poverty and divorce. When her parents separated, they moved from place to place until they eventually settled in Camden, Maine, where Cora’s sister lived. The girls joined school, and Millay’s outspoken attitude gained her some notoriety. Her school principal sneered upon her desire to be called Vincent and called her by female names starting with a V. Camden High School provided the setting for Millay to develop her talents, writing for the school magazine and had her work published in a popular children’s magazine called ‘St. Nicholas.’ Millay joined Vassar College in 1913 at the age of 21. She found life at the college to be very strict as she was used to a life of drinking, flirting with men and smoking. After college, Millay moved to New York City where her career began.

Millay had an illustrious career, highlighted by her winning a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in the year 1923 for her poem ‘The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver’. At the age of twenty, she wrote her first famed poem, ‘Renascence.’ Some of her earlier works include the 1919 play ‘Aria da Carpo’ and a 1920 collection title ‘A Few Figs From Thistles’ (Millay et al. 23). This collection explored relationships between women as did her earlier poem for Vassar College, ‘The Lamp and The Bell.’ Millay won another prestigious award in 1943, the Frost Medal that recognized her work as a contributor to American poetry. Other notable works under her belt include ‘The King’s Henchman’, ‘Two Slatterns and a King,’ as well as ‘Euclid alone has looked at Beauty Bare.’

Millay died a tragic death in the year 1950 at only 58 years old. Her husband, Boissevain, succumbed to lung cancer a year before his wife, leaving her to spend the last year of her life alone (Shengold, 724). In 1936, Millay suffered a horrific accident in a station wagon, and she needed multiple surgeries and hospitalization. The accident affected her quality of life as she lived in constant pain. Her death in 1950 was the result of a heart attack.

Edna St Vincent Millay was an accomplished playwright and poet, and significant inspiration for others that came after her. After her death, her sister Norma moved to Millay’s Steepletop home with her husband. The two set up the Millay Colony of Arts in honour of their later sister in her former home. The home was later converted into a museum by the Edna St Vincent Millay as a fitting tribute to her legacy. Today, Millay is also remembered as an LGBTQ icon, a fearless poet and a woman unafraid to speak her mind.Works Cited

Millay, Edna St Vincent, David Duane Frost, and Dorothy Jacobson Frost. Poems-Edna St Vincent Millay. Everymans Library, 2010.

Shengold, Leonard. “Haunted by parents—A literary example of change meaning loss: Edna St. Vincent Millay.” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 73.3 (2004): 717-735.