Renascence and Other Poems
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About this ebook
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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in 1892 in Rockland, Maine, the eldest of three daughters, and was encouraged by her mother to develop her talents for music and poetry. Her long poem "Renascence" won critical attention in an anthology contest in 1912 and secured for her a patron who enabled her to go to Vassar College. After graduating in 1917 she lived in Greenwich Village in New York for a few years, acting, writing satirical pieces for journals (usually under a pseudonym), and continuing to work at her poetry. She traveled in Europe throughout 1921-22 as a "foreign correspondent" for Vanity Fair. Her collection A Few Figs from Thistles (1920) gained her a reputation for hedonistic wit and cynicism, but her other collections (including the earlier Renascence and Other Poems [1917]) are without exception more seriously passionate or reflective. In 1923 she married Eugene Boissevain and -- after further travel -- embarked on a series of reading tours which helped to consolidate her nationwide renown. From 1925 onwards she lived at Steepletop, a farmstead in Austerlitz, New York, where her husband protected her from all responsibilities except her creative work. Often involved in feminist or political causes (including the Sacco-Vanzetti case of 1927), she turned to writing anti-fascist propaganda poetry in 1940 and further damaged a reputation already in decline. In her last years of her life she became more withdrawn and isolated, and her health, which had never been robust, became increasingly poor. She died in 1950.
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Reviews for Renascence and Other Poems
5 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I don't know why I bought this book years ago. Maybe because I'd heard the name Edna St. Vincent Millay, and yet had never read or heard a single one of her poems. While skimming through "Books of the Century," this title caught my eye and I remembered that I had "Renascence and Other Poems" somewhere among the thousands of books on my shelves. After some searching it appeared, paper slightly yellowing (it is a $1 Dover edition), I sat down and read the poems--on some I lingered, others were quickly digested.The general themes are: Death, Loss, Nature. Poetry is a crapshoot for me--either I like a poem immensely, feel it as a tangible thing or I don't get it. That is, I understand the words, even the images, maybe even the idea, but just don't feel what is so special about a particular poem. So with this collection--some of the poems resonated as an auditory, visual and emotional thing, others...were just there. At first I thought, "OK, now I've read these poems, I can donate the book and free up some shelf space", but now, the next day, I feel a need to hold on to the book and delve back into the poems that lingered in my subconscience, like a memory vague, but compelling.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The only poem in here that I liked was "Afternoon on a Hill". I am, though, willing to admit that as my problem, not history's or literature's. I have no real taste for poetry and have had little training in it's appreciation. I therefore think that poets "do go on a lot". Perhaps that's why the succinctness of "Afternoon on a hill" painted a really good picture for me.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What an awesome range of poetics and understanding.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The title poem is simply awe-inspiring. Just a few simple pages in which Millay's sing-songy, non-challent rhythms and rhymes build into profound and overwhelming images.