Edna St. Vincent Millay's Fatal Interview
Edna St. Vincent Millay's Fatal Interview "Millay is the poetic voice of eternal youth, feminine revolt and liberation, and potent sensitivity and suggestiveness. Her best and most representative themes are bittersweet love, sorrow, the inevitability of change, resignation, death, and ever-abiding nature." Robert Gale One of the best known women authors of her time, as well as one of the better paid, Edna St. Vincent Millay had already become an accomplished writer before her graduation from Vassar. She was the first woman ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1923, paving the way for the future of women writers. Her first book, Renascence and Other Poems, was published in 1917. The title poem, written in 1913, won Millay a scholarship to study at Vassar where many of her works, including plays as well as poetry were published in the Vassar Miscellany. Shortly thereafter, Millay wrote A Few Figs from Thistles in 1920. One of her most widely quoted poems, "First Fig" was included in the book: But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - "First Fig" is a perfect example of Millay's
If I had loved you less or played you slyly I might have held you for a summer more, But at the cost of words I value highly, And no such summer as the one before. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution's power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. However, there may be a reflection of her feelings from the previous time shown here. Lines 10-12 seem to reflect the views of many feminists of her time. ", and notes that women have loved the way she loves "at least, in lively chronicles of the past. This poem is most likely a reflection of Millay's bisexuality and feminist views. In Sonnet XXVI, Millay provides the reader with more images of strong women: XXVI Women have loved before as I love now; At least, in lively chronicles of the past- Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow Or Trojan waters by a Spartan mast Much to their cost invaded-here and there, Hunting the amorous line, skimming the rest, I find some woman bearing as I bear Love like a burning city in the breast. In the first two lines lessening of the importance of is a great shift from the traditional romantic sonnets where love rules over all. She lived in a time of great feminist appeal when women sought equality and left the delicate "womanly" image behind with the emergence of the flapper. In this poem the speaker disassociates herself from the women of her time, "I think however that of all alive/I only in such utter ancient way/ Do suffer love. " In the end she associates herself with images of headstrong women saying that their strong-willed feelings of love "in me alone survive/The unregenerate passions of a day/When treacherous queens, with death upon the tread/Heedless and willful took their knights to bed. What really gives the poem a twist is thatin contrast to spending a great amount of time lamenting over the situation the speaker chooses instead to realize that the feelings are normal and temporary and will pass while assuring the past lover that "I shall have only good to say of you. No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, Watches beside me in this windy place. It's sonnets serve almost like a photograph of the feelings of a woman living during a time when all men were created equal, and woman were struggling to be. XXX Love is not all; it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain, Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
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