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Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892-1950
Literarily and temperamentally precocious, the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay exemplified the spirit of the "Roaring Twenties" and the emancipation of American women. She started writing as a child and became a rebellious student at Vassar College. In 1917, she moved to Greenwich Village, the center of avant-garde and rebel culture. She won the Pulitzer Prize for "The Harp-Weaver" in 1923. Poetically, Millay was a romantic, inspired by the ecstatic visions of John Keats and William Wordsworth; her first notable poem "Renascence" (1912) spoke of a nature that "breathed my soul back into me." Her famous quatrain "First Fig" (1920) celebrates abandonment:
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.
Millay's romanticism was at odds with literary modernism, and her reputation has declined. However, during the 1920s she exemplified the age that she did so much to define.
Charles Ellis, 1934 |