Renascence and Other Poems: The Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay

By Edna St. Vincent Millay and Carl Van Doren

This book contains a classic collection of poetry written by Edna St. Vincent Millay, including one of the best-known American poems “Renascence". Celebrated for their lyrical beauty which is most evident in her early works, Millay's poems are infused with fiery romance and the youthful spirit that would become a characteristic of her writing. Contents include: “Edna St. Vincent Millay, by Carl Van Doren”, “Renascence”, “Interim”, “The Suicide”, “God’s World”, “Afternoon on a Hill”, “Sorrow”, “Tavern”, “Ashes of Life”, “The Little Ghost”, “Kin to Sorrow”, “Three Songs of Shattering”, etc. Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) was an American playwright, Pulitzer Prize-winning lyrical poet, and feminist activist. One of the most celebrated poets in American history, Millay is hailed as the twentieth century's most skilful sonnet writers who expertly married modern attitudes with traditional forms of expression. Other notable works by this author include: “Two Slatterns and a King” and “The Lamp and the Bell”. Ragged Hand - Read & Co is republishing this collection of classic poetry now in a new edition complete with a biography of the author by Carl Van Doren.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ragged Hand - Read & Co.
• Release date: Aug 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528790666

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.

Book preview

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RENASCENCE

AND OTHER POEMS

THE POETRY OF

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

By

EDNA

ST. VINCENT MILLAY

WITH A BIOGRAPHY

BY CARL VAN DOREN

First published in 1917

Copyright © 2020 Ragged Hand

This edition is published by Ragged Hand,

an imprint of Read & Co. 

This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any

way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.

For more information visit

www.readandcobooks.co.uk

Contents

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

By Carl Van Doren

RENASCENCE

INTERIM

THE SUICIDE

GOD’S WORLD

AFTERNOON ON A HILL

SORROW

TAVERN

ASHES OF LIFE

THE LITTLE GHOST

KIN TO SORROW

THREE SONGS OF SHATTERING

I

II

III

THE SHROUD

THE DREAM

INDIFFERENCE

WITCH-WIFE

BLIGHT

WHEN THE YEAR GROWS OLD

SONNETS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI BLUEBEARD

EDNA

ST. VINCENT MILLAY

By Carl Van Doren

The little renaissance of poetry which there have been a hundred historians to scent and chronicle in the United States during the last decade, flushed to a dawn in 1912. In that year was founded a magazine for the sole purpose of helping poems into the world; in that year was published an anthology which meant to become annual, though, as it happened, another annual by another editor took its place the year following. The real poetical event of 1912, however, was the appearance in The Lyrical Year, tentative anthology, of the first outstanding poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Who that then had any taste of which he can now be proud but remembers the discovery, among the numerous failures and very innumerous successes which made up the volume, of Renascence, by a girl of twenty whose name none but her friends and a lucky critic or two had heard? After wading through tens and dozens of rhetorical strophes and moral stanzas, it was like suddenly finding wings to come upon these lines:

"All I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked another way,

And saw three islands in a bay.

So with my eyes I traced the line

Of the horizon, thin and fine,

Straight around till I was come

Back to where I'd started from;

And all I saw from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood."

The diction was so plain, the arrangement so