Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Renascence & Other Poems: "The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed"
    Renascence & Other Poems: "The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed"
    Renascence & Other Poems: "The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed"
    Ebook44 pages32 minutes

    Renascence & Other Poems: "The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed"

    By Edna St. Vincent Millay

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on 22nd February 1892 in Rockland, Maine, the eldest of three daughters.

    Her early years were tinted with much difficulty; divorced parents, poverty and a constant change of location.

    Despite this once settled in Camden, Maine Edna developed her literary talents at a furious rate. By 15, she had published her poetry in the popular children's magazine St. Nicholas, the Camden Herald, and the high-profile anthology Current Literature.

    In 1912, at 20, she entered her poem ‘Renascence’ in The Lyric Year poetry contest. Despite being considered the best poem it was only given fourth place. The ensuing uproar brought publicity and the offer of funding for her education at Vassar College. Here she wrote, both verse and plays as well as embarking on a series of affairs with women as she explored the wider world and all it offered.

    Edna achieved significant fame when she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 for ‘The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver’. It was a magnificent triumph.

    She married Eugen Jan Boissevain but on her wedding day she fell ill and he drove her to Manhattan for emergency surgery. He nursed her back to health with remarkable devotion. They were together, in an open marriage, until his death in 1949.

    In the summer of 1936, Edna was riding in a station wagon when the door swung open and she was hurled into the pitch-darkness and rolled into a rocky gully. She survived but with severely damaged nerves in her spine and was to live the rest of her life in pain.

    In 1942 in an article for The New York Times Magazine, Edna mourned the callous destruction of the Czechoslovak town of Lidice by Nazi forces in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. The article would serve as the basis of her 32-page poem, ‘Murder of Lidice’ in 1942.

    Edna St. Vincent Millay, after suffering a heart attack, fell down the stairs and died at her home on 19th October 1950. She was 58 years old.

    <

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPortable Poetry
    Release dateJun 10, 2020
    ISBN9781839675317
    Renascence & Other Poems: "The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed"
    Author

    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.

    Read more from Edna St. Vincent Millay

    Related to Renascence & Other Poems

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Nov 1, 2023

      loved best. Words I have neversaid. New sentence, at 80. Of coursenot more than his children, and their children. That goeswithout saying—but I want to lay down eachelement of love’s house. First,the hole, under—apple cellar, potato cellar,cellar to

      5 min read

    • Article

      Six Sonnets

      Jan 1, 2021

      Goldenrod, I could say, you know, everybody wants somethingfrom me, but, well, everybody wants something and nobody wantsnothing from me, goldenrod, towhead, beast. Goldenrod, you packthe meadows like gold-plated sardines. I have heart palpitationsbu

      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      He kept me through childhood.There was a reasonhe kept me from sin like a biscuitwarming in the oven.It’s okay I tell the rain to keep him a theorybut bring him downonce in a while.It’s okay to be honest or selfishbut find the spot where you sinka li

      2 min read

    • Article

      Devil Asks Why You Would Mouth The Word Pity

      Jul 1, 2022

      even in this abundance of dark? Even in this abundance of dark you have totake the stars on faith. Look: Under today’s dim sky there is a basket.In that basket there is a fish. Come night, you are the animal that will eat the best parts of it. And ye

      1 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      I’ve seen enough films where a character nickshimself shaving or maybe has a bread knife slip and the thinrun of blood is supposed to stand for some violence,for something he did and is desperateto cover up, but the truth will out—I’ve seen enough th

      2 min read

    • Article

      Perfection

      Jun 9, 2020

      For years I could barely write a page. I thought I was becoming a virtuoso of smallness while the grief, which is wordless, occupied an ever-greater volume. My friend lived in the estates on the bad side of town. Let’s go to the forest, she said when

      9 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      Two Poems
      2 min read

    • Article

      Reactions

      Aug 17, 2022

      Reactions
      2 min read

    • Article

      Ishion Hutchinson

      Jun 8, 2021

      Tremor in his hands. He turns obsoleteleaves edged with thunder since the opening scene.What he sees he reads under croton shade,out in the sun. Restless peninsula,dog-eared, melting off into the blue.The blue breaks white as hallucination,more hagga

      3 min read

    • Article

      Younger Than War

      Nov 9, 2023

      Younger Than War
      1 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Chantal V. Johnson

      Dec 2, 2022

      Chantal V. Johnson reflects on 2022 through the books she read. The post A Year in Reading: Chantal V. Johnson appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems by Eavan Boland

      May 1, 2020

      Four Poems by Eavan Boland
      3 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2024

      I was trying to look a little less like myselfand more like other humans, humans who belonged, so I put on a skort.Purchased in another life, when I had a husband and wrote thank-you notes and held dinner parties,the skort even had its own little poc

      6 min read

    • Article

      Some Of The Men We Love Are Terrorists

      Jan 1, 2022

      & honestly, i have no solutions—our world a mad swarm of bees. forgive me my own devotion, the handsome clench. my first love masters a sinister arithmetic; his patrilineage swelling like a heavy god between his legs. i’m well-conditioned, my hands a

      1 min read

    • Article

      For Snow Queens Who Have Considered Suicide Because Paul Newman in the First Twenty Minutes of Paris Blues Is Too Much

      Jun 14, 2022

      But I start with the great Sidney Poitier because his stardom was an established part of the Freedom movement in 1964, and he was to be the chaperone of my inner awakening that dramatic year. Indianapolis, my hometown, had some brave marches and two

      10 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems by Sylvia Legris

      Dec 15, 2019

      Mad March dreamsof crane flowers,birds of paradise.Strelitzia reginae a deft cutof bird and flower. Sunbirds perch and powdertheir breasts with pollen—pollinators who sail the season.(A rare plant who prefers birds over insectsam I.) —V The wide swee

      1 min read

    • Article

      José Donoso Saw the Future of Latin American Literature

      Nov 21, 2023

      American readers have largely forgotten the single greatest writer to come from the Latin American Boom: Chilean novelist José Donoso. The post José Donoso Saw the Future of Latin American Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2020

      She was a security guard and even though her uniform was black I could seeIt was covered in blood, the marble floor was covered in blood, it wasSlowly pooling out from the space where HER HAND used to beOh my god, I said, then I started to say, YOUR

      3 min read

    • Article

      India Holton

      Apr 24, 2022

      India Holton
      1 min read

    • Article

      Oceans

      Mar 15, 2019

      I used to be interested in mountains. They moved at a speed I could deal with. They waited for me to catch up. It was like that all my life. Then we moved to California, and after eight years of earthquakes I began to doubt my ability to put things i

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Renascence & Other Poems

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Renascence & Other Poems - Edna St. Vincent Millay

      ^book_preview_excerpt.htmlVr89e/VTq*rv$"@%`!F>r|,{/{E3i༝_m.UwEY*e+ED׿OU>;Z蝴n"j,1bG'=?pb\|t yK|n%> W9iK_\1] mՌ*Dr5R$Ejڨ|8~fXOz fG; 4((jAǖT$u]*{[+|0m;T9@U+lqi׷*:bV )Tv(V;lꙁ( # ov)QME. NkPNE$LXdjm$ -P'q-u:#B`$' uFeDkvt2Ejoohw#eRA|TeF^+c0n+CTq~DJް*xօ{BVLiZ%tpp C#lh"01q6?Ac6u(y<=~u$6`]{8j3+#,͇%yw .OUtk<]|~%}}j<=C˥3F{pw0u7=2_7 ,+;3.; fD&Kq޻a]B(ӄ=@Y rIuvEG4IR8 ;hc]EW%.@R@}8]75|s,MDV8P``+ѹ=<-xp 0^, W7&t;\d}#
      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1