Product Description

One of America’s most celebrated poets—and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1923—Edna St. Vincent Millay defined a generation with her passionate lyrics and intoxicating voice of liberation. Edited by Millay biographer Nancy Milford, this Modern Library Paperback Classics collection captures the poet’s unique spirit in works like Renascence and Other Poems, A Few Figs from This-tles, and Second April, as well as in “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver” and eight sonnets from the early twenties. As Milford writes in her Introduction, “These are the poems that made Edna St. Vincent Millay’s reputation when she was young. Saucy, insolent, flip, and defiant, her little verses sting the page.”

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24026 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-10
• Released on: 2002-09-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780375761232
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
?Edna St. Vincent Millay seems to me one of the only poets writing in English in our time who have attained anything like the stature of great literary figures.??Edmund Wilson -- Review

Review
“Edna St. Vincent Millay seems to me one of the only poets writing in English in our time who have attained anything like the stature of great literary figures.”—Edmund Wilson

From the Inside Flap
One of America's most celebrated poets—and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1923—Edna St. Vincent Millay defined a generation with her passionate lyrics and intoxicating voice of liberation. Edited by Millay biographer Nancy Milford, this Modern Library Paperback Classics collection captures the poet's unique spirit in works like Renascence and Other Poems, A Few Figs from This-tles, and Second April, as well as in "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver" and eight sonnets from the early twenties. As Milford writes in her Introduction, "These are the poems that made Edna St. Vincent Millay's reputation when she was young. Saucy, insolent, flip, and defiant, her little verses sting the page."

Customer Reviews

Be Warned
Edna St. Vincent Millay is (in my opinion) one of the great 20th century poets, generally under-appreciated. Readers who buy this edition SHOULD BE WARNED that it's not a selection from her whole life's work, but only from her early poetry, which made her reputation but isn't necessarily her best. If you want a more comprehensive view of her work, including the later, more mature work, I think you'll have to get the Collected Poems and make your own 'selection'.

A Good Introduction
This book is a good introduction to the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay presenting many of her most memorable poems. It is not a comprehensive presentation of her writing (for example, some of her more erotic poems are not present) but it is not meant to be. The introduction is good and provides the highlights of her life and career. I would like to have had a chronology of her life and a list of her complete works in this book. Overall, this volume satisfied my curiosity but I would want a good biography to accompany this book in order to know more about St. Vincent Millay.

I must also comment on the book itself. My copy has many pages that were cut at an angle with the result that when they were bound the text becomes the margin! The end papers were also effected so the design is set on a slight angle, the edge of which comes close to being cut off. It was unsettling for me to find this book in this condition. I did not return it because I did not care to go to the expense (considering the price of the book) of packaging the book to send back.

Worth it for the sonnets alone
Her shorter pieces are much better than her longer ones. Many of the sonnets are quite good. She may be unlucky or unhappy in love, but she is wry about it and not the least bit maudlin or self-indulgent.

The poems about the unbearable beauties of nature strike me as overwrought and do not work at all.

Her shortest bits sting the page. As an example, this two lines, the "Second Fig" from her collection A Few Figs From Thistles, describes quite neatly those whose ability to see facts are limited by their wishing them not so. She writes:

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!