Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright and the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She was also known for her unconventional, bohemian lifestyle and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work.

Quotes

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And — sure enough! — I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
- "Renascence" (1912), st. 3 Renascence and Other Poems (1917)

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, —
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat — the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.
- "Renascence" (1912), st. 20, Renascence and Other Poems (1917)

It's little I know what's in my heart,
What's in my mind it's little I know,
But there's that in me must up and start,
And it's little I care where my feet go.
- "Departure" (1918) from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)

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.
- "First Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand;
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
- "Second Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)

Many a bard's untimely death
Lends unto his verses breath;
Here's a song was never sung:
Growing old is dying young.
- "To a Poet Who Died Young" in Second April‎ (1921), p. 52

"One thing there's no getting by—
I've been a wicked girl." said I;
"But if I can't be sorry, why,
I might as well be glad!"
- From "The Penitent", A Few Figs from Thistles (1922)

But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.
- From Sonnet III: "Oh, Think not I am faithful to a vow!", A Few Figs from Thistles (1922)

After all, my earstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Now that love is perished?
- "Passer Mortuus Est", st. 3, Second April, 1921

My heart is warm with friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.
- "Travel", st. 3, Second April, 1921

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere.
- Sonnet XXII from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
- Sonnet XLIII: "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why" (1923), Collected Poems", 1931

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.
- Sonnet XXX from Fatal Interview (1931)

Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that matters, that is.
- "Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies," lines 1-4, from Wine from These Grapes (1934)

… one damn thing after another … one damn thing over and over.
- From an October 1930 letter to Arthur Davison Ficke, as variously described by her biographers, e.g.:
  - [L]ife was not so much "one damn thing after another" as "one damn thing over and over"
    - As paraphrased ("she had sent [...] a half-comic note, complaining that...") with quoted phrases in Jean Gould, The Poet and Her Book: A Biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1969), p. 198
  - [L]ife isn't one thing after another, it's the same thing over and over
    - As paraphrased ("she writes that...") and apparently Bowlderized in Miriam Gurko, Restless spirit: the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1962), p. 197
  - [I]t was not true that life is one damn thing after another — it was one damn thing over and over
    - As paraphrased ("Edna had written [...] that...") in Joan Dash, A Life of One's Own: Three Gifted Women and the Men they Married (1973), p. 189
- The paraphrase by Dash appears to be the origin of later popularly attributed variants, e.g.:
  - It is not true that life is one damn thing after another. It's the same damn thing over and over.
    - As attributed without citation in Psychoanalysis Today: A Case Book (1991) by Elizabeth Thorne and Shirley Herscovitch Schaye, p. 93
  - It is not true that life is one damn thing after another. It's the same dang thing over and over again.
    - As attributed without citation in The Last Word: A Treasury of Women's Quotes (1992) by Carolyn Warner
The only people I really hate are servants. They are not really human beings at all. As attributed without citation in At Home by Bill Bryson, Chapter V, "The Scullery and the Larder" p. 111

Quotes about Edna St. Vincent Millay

When people talk about American literature, they really mean Hemingway, Faulkner and Poe and when they do include women it's Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay. To decide to take that on and say, 'I will speak and will be heard'-that takes a lot of guts.
- 1988 interview in Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989)

When I was in high school, I had never read Black poetry. The one poet of color whom I had read, and loved, was Pablo Neruda. I have to say that Neruda and Millay were the two poets I loved. All the others didn't make much sense. Except Eliot. He really got to me.
- 1984 interview in Conversations with Audre Lorde (2004)

Wylie and Millay were standard in high school-women whom I really loved.
- 1978 interview in Conversations with Audre Lorde (2004)

T. S. Eliot, Millay, Helene Margaret, I read and connected with because they made me feel what they were feeling, or wanted to feel.
- 1978 interview in Conversations with Audre Lorde (2004)

When I was a freshman at Brandeis, an instructor told us that we should not like Edna St. Vincent Millay. He didn’t say it in so many words, but the message was that we shouldn’t like her because she slept around. No women got into the modernist boys’ club except Marianne Moore, who was respected because she was respectable. Sexually respectable. This sounds oversimplified, but it isn’t. All the other women poets had sex lives — kinky sex lives.
- Alicia Ostriker Interview (2019)

Edna St. Vincent Millay was outspoken and feisty.
- Marge Piercy interview in My Life, My Body (2015)

External links

Encyclopedic article on Edna St. Vincent Millay on Wikipedia
Media related to Edna St. Vincent Millay on Wikimedia Commons
Works related to Author:Edna St. Vincent Millay on Wikisource
Edna St. Vincent Millay at Project Gutenberg