Edna St. Vincent Millay

Collected Lyrics

There are over 250 poems in this book, so I dare say I will not be listing and providing links for each one here. A nice collection, if you're interested, can be found here.

One thing that really surprised me is that I used to adore Millay. So much so that I purchased this book. However, I had not read her in over a decade. Maybe even two. What the angst-ridden youth saw as romantic and deeply mystic, the adult sees as too much death and even more drama. Drama that is distasteful now. This woman is sad all the time. And the drama is almost comical. Yuck. I simply don't like her anymore. She is unquestionably gifted, of course. It's just death, death, death and drama. If I wanted this, I'd turn my attentions to Alistair Cooke.

Even so... I was able to find a few nuggets:

The Suicide
The lines that got me:

"Ah, Life, I would have been a pleasant thing
To have about the house when I was grown
If thou hadst left my little joys alone!"

So true, so true.

Tavern
This one reminds me so much of my mother with her dominant grey eyes. Yes, I know: brown are dominant. But her husband had brown eyes and their children (3) all had grey eyes. One of their children was my bdad who had a child (me) with a woman with brown eyes. I have grey eyes. I married a man with brown eyes. Where are my grey-eyed children??? My children have hazel eyes... my daughter's eyes are actually GOLD, but I call them hazel because who ever heard of gold eyes?

But the poem... particularly this:

"Aye, 'tis a curious fancy-
But all the good I know
Was taught me out of two grey eyes
A long time ago."

Spring
"Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots."

and

"It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers."

The Blue-Flag In the Bog
This is such a novel look at the unique and precious experience of life on this earth. It reminds me of a friend who only values life on this earth.

Millay has words with God at times, but in this poem writes the welcome words:

"He will set His mighty feet
Firmly on the sliding sand;
Like a little frightened bird
I will creep into His hand..."

Elegy Before Death
Here's a little twist of the theme of nature's indifference:

"Spring will not ail nor autumn falter;
Nothing will know that you are gone,-
Saving alone some sullen plough-land
None but yourself sets foot upon;

Saving the may-weed and the pig-weed
Nothing will know that you are dead,-
These, and perhaps a useless wagon
Standing beside some tumbled shed."

I like the image of the weeds feeding off of the deceased. At last something in nature is not "indifferent"!

Alms
A unique look at a lop-sided affair. Most of us can recall a time when our love waxed to another's waning.

"My heart is what is was before,
But it is winter with your love..."

I like how she repeats "But it is winter with your love" always in stark contrast to the warmth and life that she is trying to imbue the doomed relationship with.

Lament
It seems a practical, nonplussed reaction to a death, but no- the last line says it all. A widowed mother tries to carry on; she is in shock.

"Life must go on;
I forget just why."

It kind of makes you cry.

To the Not Impossible Him
Millay's mother's influence is upon her in this poem. This is where the ambitious individual shatters gender stereotypes of her era, and she bears a mischievous glint in her eye:

"How shall I know, unless I go
To Cairo and Cathay,
Whether or not this blessed spot
Is blest in every way?

Now it may be, the flower for me
Is this beneath my nose;
How shall I tell, unless I smell
The Carthaginian rose?

The fabric of my faithful love
No power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I stay here,-but oh, my dear,
If I should ever travel!"

You have to love it! (Beware, vanilla! There are 31 flavors at Baskin & Robbins!)

The Singing-Woman from the Wood's Edge
This poem is a mixture of wild imagery and blasphemy. I think Millay was less trying to make a statement and more trying to have fun. Which means it was probably a huge statement and she wasn't having fun in the slightest.

Feast
For someone who talks about death all the time she sings of being in this poem.

The Return from Town
This is a very positive poem and a welcome departure from Millay's usual fare. Very novel look at a true heart.

Winter Night
This was a very nice natural depiction of a winter night and of trying to stay warm via gathering wood for a fire. I liked it because it was real and cozy.

It is not to be found online so I include it in full here:

"Pile high the hickory and the light
Log of chestnut struck by the blight.
Welcome-in the winter night.

The day has gone in hewing and felling.
Sawing and drawing wood to the dwelling
For the night of talk and story-telling.

These are the hours that give the edge
To the blunted axe and the bent wedge,
Straighten the saw and lighten the sledge.

Here are question and reply.
And the fire reflected in the thinking eye.
So peace, and let the bob-cat cry."

This is a poem she selected for children:

"I know a hundred ways to die.
I've often thought I'd try one:
Lie down beneath a motor truck
Some day when standing by one.

Or throw myself from off a bridge-
Except such things must be
So hard upon the scavengers
And men that clean the sea.

I know some poison I could drink.
I've often thought I'd taste it.
But mother bought it for the sink,
And drinking it would waste it."

Aw, isn't that cheery and gay for the little ones to go to bed by!

Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies
These lines evoked tears over a period of two days whenever I'd stop to think of them (and now):

"But you do not wake up a month from then, two months,
A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night
And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say
Oh, God! Oh, God!"

The Solid Sprite Who Stands Alone
She was in one of those rare moods I think when she turned rope and skipped these words out:

"The solid sprite who stands alone,
And walks the world with equal stride,
Grieve though he may, is not undone
Because a friend has died.

He knows that man is born to care,
And ten and threescore's all his span;
And this is comfort and to spare
For such a level man.

He is not made like crooked me,
Who cannot rise nor lift my head,
And all because what had to be
Has been, what lived is dead;

Who lie among my tears and rust,
And all because a mortal brain
That loved to think, is clogged with dust,
And will not think again."

Spring in the Garden
This was a very fresh look at wishing someone alive again.

"Ah, cannot the curled shoots of the larkspur that you loved so,
Cannot the spiny poppy that no winter kills
Instruct you how to return through the thawing ground and the thin snow
Into this April sun that is driving the mist between the hills?"

and then

"And I fear that not a root in all this heaving sea
Of land, has nudged you where you lie, has found
Patience and time to direct you, numb and stupid as you still must be
From your first winter underground."

Sonnet
Millay sings of time altering her anguish into something that she can at last bear in her old age.

"Time, that renews the tissues of this frame,
That built the child and hardened the soft bone,
Taught him to wail, to blink, to walk alone,
Stare, question, wonder, give the world a name,
Forget the watery darkness whence he came,
Attends no less the boy to manhood grown,
Brings him new raiment, strips him of his own:
All skins are shed at length, remorse, even shame.
Such hope is mine, if this indeed be true,
I dread no more the first white in my hair,
Or even age itself, the easy shoe,
The cane, the wrinkled hands, the special chair:
Time, doing this to me, may alter too
My anguish, into something I can bear."

On Thought in Harness
In this poem thought is a falcon. The rest reminded me of Allen Ginsberg's "creative purity" philosophy.

Lines for a Grave-Stone
This is a great poem. So good that it has to be included in its entirety here:

"Man alive, that mournst thy lot,
Desiring what thou hast not got,
Money, beauty, love, what not;

Deeming it blesseder to be
A rotted man, that live to see
So rude a sky as covers thee;

Deeming thyself of all unblest
And wretched souls the wretchedest,
Longing to die and be at rest;

Know: that however grim the fate
Which sent thee forth to meditate
Upon my enviable state,

Here lieth one who would resign
Gladly his lot, to shoulder thine.
Give me thy coat; get into mine."

That just gives me chillbumps.

The Rabbit
I don't know why I include this here other than the last line. Couldn't find a link so here's the whole thing:

"Hearing the hawk squeal in the high sky
I and the rabbit trembled.
Only the dark small rabbits newly kittled in their neatly dissembled
Hollowed nest in the thicket thatched with straw
Did not respect his cry.
At least, not that I saw.

But I have said to the rabbit with rage and a hundred times, "Hop!
Streak it for the bushes! Why do you sit so still?
You are bigger than a house, I tell you, you are bigger than a hill, you are a beacon for airplanes!
O indiscreet!
And the hawk and all my friends are out to kill!
Get under cover!" But the rabbit never stirred; she never will.

And I shall see again and again the large eye blaze
With death, and gently glaze;
The leap into the air I shall see again and again, and the kicking feet;
And the sudden quiet everlasting, and the blade of grass green in the strange mouth of the interrupted grazer."

Such a vivid image; you can see it. While the poem is about witnessing a rabbit killed by a hawk and how Millay both pities and despises the rabbit's maladaptive reaction, it makes me think of some regret in life that I ruminate over. Seeing my ghost over and over again, I scream at that "rabbit", but she will never hear.

That is it. This class is over. I may occasionally come back with new things I've read, and I may write more poems. To tell you the truth, looking at all these wonderful poets has made me see how truly truly much my own poetry sucks. I have just this day thrown reams and reams of it into the trash. I just don't care anymore. But the newer stuff seems somehow better anyway. Maybe I'm under the influence. I don't want to be great, (and it's a good thing!) I just want to fix the moments of life like nameless butterflies on styrofoam... not really for posterity but for just having been able to do it.

This second class was a lot more intense than the first. Some of the author choices were emotionally driven while others were just my interested examination of my own evolution really. The 400 page Ginsberg book, while I'm glad I read it, almost threw me for a loop. For days I would wake up with "Why did I choose a 400 page book about Allen Ginsberg?" on my lips. To borrow from Morrissey: "I can smile about it now but at the time it was terrible." (Click on "listen" next to number 9: Shakespeare's Sister.)

So I guess this is it. Goodbye and goodbye. I have taken the requisite number of hours to reinstate my teaching certificate. The only thing left to do at this point is take the confounded state test again and be done with it.

My teaching certificate was no match for a decade of physical illness. Hmmm... the beginning of my downfall precipitated by the results of one little test. The amelioration, at least of my certification status, concluded by the results of one little test. In many ways lately I'm realizing I've come full circle.

Of all the plots here at the Word's Worth, Edna's wins the prestigious "Best Grave" award.








Visit it here.