Almost a hundred years ago, Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of the best-known women in America and certainly the best known female poet. Though she's been unfashionable for many years, I predict a comeback -- for reasons explained below. Anyway, true talent is never a matter of fashion for those who strictly meditate the thankless muse. Certainly that included Papa Hemingway, who said of Vincent (as ESVM liked to be called), "She could hit them with the bases loaded":
Tenderly, in those times, as though she fed
An ailing child -- with sturdy propping up
Of its small, feverish body in the bed,
And steadying of its hands about the cup --
She gave her husband of her body's strength,
Thinking of men, what helpless things they were,
Until he turned and fell asleep at length,
And stealthily stirred the night and spoke to her.
Familiar, at such moments, like a friend,
Whistled far off the long, mysterious train,
And she could see in her mind's vision plain
The magic World, where cities stood on end...
Remote from where she lay -- and yet -- between,
Save for something asleep beside her, only the window screen.
In 1920 Vincent began her love affair with young Edmund Wilson, whose books Memoirs of Hecate County and To the Finland Station are sexual allegories of this torrid and inflaming time. "Bunny" and Vincent used to amuse themselves by shooting nude figure studies of the poet, of which some excellent prints still exist. The pictures are now in the possession of the Library of Congress, but are under an embargo...until 2010. Yes, that's why I predict the start of an ESVM revival beginning as soon as next week!
But as a reader of the Best American Poetry blog, you don't have to wait until next week. Through my contacts in the government, I've been able to obtain a few of "Bunny's" quite excellent photographs. I submit them here to your connoisseurship, including the brief notes that "Bunny" scribbled on the backs ---->>>>
"Shayna tuchus,
as the Jews say!"
Here's a link to a good article about Vincent, including mention of the photographs and shared optimism for revival of interest: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200110/mallon
Mitch Sisskind, what are you doing out there in LA? Tsk, tsk. :)
Posted by: Laura Orem | December 27, 2009 at 09:28 AM
Thanks for the breaking news Mitch. Nice detective work!
Posted by: Stacey | December 27, 2009 at 10:54 AM
vincent seems to have been a real firecracker, as they said in her day. i know she and emily d are causing problems in poet's heaven. emily has started smoking cigarettes.
Posted by: mitch s. | December 27, 2009 at 11:06 AM
Do you suppose ESVM took her ivory dildo with her?
Posted by: Laura Orem | December 27, 2009 at 11:30 AM
she may have taken it or could always purchase a new one at the heavenly toy store. i'm certain emily had one also -- probably not archived in widener library with her other belongings. ("Your old snood mothballed at harvard...." -- adrienne rich)
Posted by: mitch s. | December 27, 2009 at 12:38 PM
The Millay comeback is well under way. The absence of her poems from Richard Ellmann's "New Oxford Book of American Verse" (1976) reflects the condescension of the academic critics, who held her sexual libertarianism against her. She also committed the even less pardonable sin of becoming a famous and successful poet early in her career. To make matters worse there was, at the time, a rebellion against the sonnet and its modern practitioners. Well, the form has survived that prejudice, and the idea that girls have sex drives and women can write poetry has taken hold. Millay's sonnets are beautifully made and are as fresh and compelling in their content as when she wrote them. You can read her sonnets as a sequence chronicling her erotic autobiography -- less graphically than, say, Anais Nin but with more passion. Millay is represented with four sonnets and two other poems in the current "Oxford Book of American Poetry" (2006). I'd have included three or four others, had space allowed.
Posted by: DL | December 27, 2009 at 01:06 PM
Yes, David Lehman's selections in the Oxford anthology are brilliant.
Posted by: Marissa Despain | December 27, 2009 at 01:27 PM
I wonder if all this had something to do with her falling down the stairs and breaking her neck.
(Mitch - I think you're right about Emily D., too.)
Seriously, I agree with DL that ESVM's reputation has suffered from a combination of chauvinism and sour grapes. I think the fact she was beautiful didn't help with the critics, either.
Posted by: Laura Orem | December 27, 2009 at 01:57 PM
i agree with david too. her best poems were her sonnets and i guess there was a modernist reaction against traditional forms. also there seems to have been a time when she was really a popular success and then maybe that worked against her long term. well, it's all a big mess.
Posted by: mitch s. | December 27, 2009 at 03:07 PM