I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listens for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet know 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.

For me, summer vacation on a remote island is always a time for tackling works of literature that require little distraction, but this year the only book I was able to completely immerse myself in was Savage Beauty - a biography of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford. Before this I've never knowingly read anything by Millay and know nothing of her life, although I do know I've got a copy of her Collected Lyrics that I picked up for a buck from the used bookstore across the street from my apartment, you know, to get around to reading someday because I probably should.
Biographies are funny, tricky things. I haven't read many. Why does anyone read a biography, anyway? Boiled down to it, it's mostly to get the dirt on some one famous - basically the same as why people watch "Behind the Music" or "True Life: I'm a Meth-Addicted Diaper Fetishist" if that shit is even still on TV anymore. Biographies, generally, are about people who are now dead, which is the difference. Their purpose, then, is to be entertained by the supposedly real life of a dead person, and there's something a little perverse in that I think. Anyway, I couldn't help the guilt that crept in as I inevitably passed judgment after judgment on the major events of her life - bored to irritation by the nearly perpetual illness that pervaded her later life as I would be by any poorly-executed plot device. Meanwhile I inwardly scolded Milford for any statements that seemed subjective or presumptuous.
Not that I have anything else to compare it to, but the book seems very thoroughly-researched, although it left me with many more questions about poets from that era (early 20th century, the so-called Jazz Age) in general. Was all poetry so glamorous at that time or did Millay just pull that off somehow? She was a bona fide celebrity - made her living off her writing, stalked by the press,...people used to memorize her poems and write her love letters by the masses, her readings were standing room only, if at all. She mesmerized the public reading her poems over the radio. Her books were bestsellers during the Great Depression. It was a world of poetry that is completely unimaginable now, but if only we'd lived in it (why don't we?)!
It seems that her persona contributed to her fame; she was very young (20 when her first poem won her widespread fame), frequently referred to as "elfin," and "childlike," and was known to make just about everyone who met her fall completely in love with her. Most folks at the time had trouble believing such big poems could come out of such a little girl. She was simultaneously pretty badass - she banged whoever she wanted whenever she wanted, hung out with anarchists and other folk of ill-repute, wrote anti-isolationist political "propaganda" before WW2 (although even she acknowledged that it wasn't very good poetry), was the first lady to win a Pulitzer for poetry, and was generally a pretty forward-thinking broad. She must have been accessible and charming enough to be America's sweetheart (her obsession with trendy clothes probably helped), while progressive enough to grab a spot on the FBI's watchlist pretty early on (although, really, how hard can that be to do?).
Although often smug, self-important and somewhat over-dramatic, Millay's is nonetheless a captivating life to follow. What fascinates me about her poetry, but is conspicuously not discussed (I guess biographies tend to be more about the life than the work), is the consistent attention to formality - much of her work that appears in the book (in full, which I appreciated) are sonnets or series of rhymed, metrical quatrains. This surely contributed to her immediate mainstream success, but she persisted through the aesthetic upheavals of the high Modernist period, and despite being in Paris during the early 1920's when Dada and surrealism were making waves. Although she herself remained immune to the experimentation going on at the time, she did recommend ee cummings for a Guggenheim award, albeit somewhat reluctantly, calling some of his work "pompous nonsense." She also did a verse satire of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, apparently making fun of she called Modernism's "pretensions." I would love to get my hands on that to see what she said.
To be perfectly honest, her formalism astounds me, as it does with any poet who can write easily and beautifully within the restrictions of older forms. It's definitely reflective of my coming to poetry in a time when free verse and prose poems are the most commonly used forms, and I feel kind of ignorant saying this but I think pre-free verse poetry is artistically rigorous in ways I cannot imagine trying to execute. Millay would draft complete sonnets in her head before writing anything down, while I have yet to write a successful sestina (and I've tried! Really!). Anyway, I think it's a reflection of how poetry itself has changed to make other forms less valued. The one class focused on form that I ever took was both eye-opening and extremely challenging, and it's somewhat unfortunate, I think, that form is not more widely explored (at my school, anyway).

Here's a poem, one of her most famous & quoted, supposedly heralding the dawn of a "new woman":

First Fig

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!

Part 1: 

Part 2: 

Our party explores Digital Ferret Compact Disks, of which I wrote in a prior entry:

This gentleman, whose name I recall is Jeff, expressed interest in becoming a Gothic Youtube Star, and I have attempted to fulfill that desire insofar as I am able to do so: 

I'll put forth an effort to publish a second post today, so to ensure that you on whom this is all largely lost will not feel cheated. OMG A BAT loves all of its children.

- Gothicus Maximus

I ventured out to Green Spring Gardens this morning at about 9:30. Even at that time, it was already getting too hot to stay out long, so I shot less than 50 images total (and that's quite low for me). There were some really beautiful flowers in bloom this morning, particularly the thistle flowers, which were humming with bees.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

One thing that my fiancee and I have decided to do is to place certain pertinent poetry quotes on each guest table as a way of commenting on the act of marriage and love in general. We also want to have readings of two poems instead of bible verses at the ceremony (though raised in protestant faiths, neither my fiancee or I have a desire to involve God, god, or g-d in the wedding). Christian belief doesn't really figure into our lives much, if at all, myself ascribing to a more personal/individual spiritual system. Having read quite a bit of poetry we both figure choosing selections wouldn't be the hard part, but when it comes down to it choosing which quotations to use aren't always the easiest.

One that we are both sure of is "i carry your heart with me" by E. E. Cummings. This poem will be one of the two read at the ceremony, but we also want to include a selection from it on one of the tables. I like the first three lines of "On the Breakwater" by Carl Sandburg as well. I've chosen "Is It For Now Or For Always" by Philip Larkin. This is a wonderful poem. In particular the last stanza:

Is it for now or for always,
The world hangs on a stalk?
Is it a trick or a trysting-place,
The woods we have found to walk?

Is it a mirage or miracle,
Your lips that lift at mine:
And the suns like a juggler's juggling-balls,
Are they a sham or a sign?

Shine out, my sudden angel,
Break fear with breast and brow,
I take you now and for always,
For always is always now.

I'm considering this one as one of the two readings as well. So far we've also looked at poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Pablo Neruda. Our aim is to decide on the poems and get to work on organizing a display for them as soon as possible. We'll see where this goes.

"Glory Day"

We found the old cat one hot Glory Day

In the steamy weeds, swelled to twice his size;

Green glory thunder echoed in his eyes

As we laid him out where the smell of hay

And green maple shadows would make the flies

Forget him; and watching the heat waves rise

From the wind-mirroring beans we covered him with clay.

There was lightning low in the sky away

Off, and a distant rumbling down the road;

The Virginia creeper whispered to the wagon

It covered like time-snails' tracks, the old load

Of bricks for building; something like a Dragon

Crawled south in the blur of wheat's golden sway

When we buried a tomcat on Glory Day.

Hallowe'en may be the most fun, but the summer months are the most numinous. Hope Mirrlees sort of dismissed trees in summer, saying they are silent. For me, there's nothing like a summer tree: that bright sunlight hammering on the visible surface of the crown -- while within, below, there are the darkest and coolest of green and blue shadows.

The cornfields are present in the Deep Summer: those green mazes that come with the hot months and are taken down in the fall. Now, in this season, they stand as the portals to other worlds. If you don't believe me, watch Field of Dreams. But we knew about it long ago, long before the movie. Farm kids have always known.

The best part of July 4th, of course, was the fireworks. When I was little, we had a ring-side seat: the country club to our west had an extravagant fireworks show, and we could see it all from our front yard. We'd gather in the dusk -- family, friends, neighbors, we kids with fireworks of our own (loud, explosive things during the day, beautiful and fiery glowing things saved for the night). The adults sat in lawn chairs and noticed the mosquitoes. We kids wandered barefoot, from the road's day-long-baked tar, now soft and warm, to the sharp gravel at the verge, to the cool grass of the yard's edge.

The loud reports of the noise-bombs would roll clear around the Illinois horizon, 360 degrees; we could turn ourselves and follow the sound. The brilliant fire-blossoms unfolded in the sky like benedictions over the dark world.

"Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies," wrote Edna St. Vincent Millay. "Nobody that matters, that is."

On Glory Day, we were all alive. The night was warm and full of visible miracles. And the summer stretched on and on ahead, waiting for us, full of promise.

The poems slash at my vision like licks of fire, small red fiery flames of words. I read them all. I have to keep reading them.

It will not last the night? No, I will not last the night.

Sometimes the poems give off smoke, and it fills my lungs. I cough and choke and wonder. Wonder, "What am I doing with my life?" Wonder, "Am I doing anything at all?"

I can hear the corny wedding bells, see James's eyes glistening with tears that aren't like him. Were they tears of joy or sorrow? Good-bye to youth or hello to bride?

I like to sanity as a string that is fraying. It is blue and thin as it is, growing more and more slender by the second. Time wears on it like the elements, and it shrinks in shyness. It is my string, my own, but also a communal string.

I wonder if I will be like the tide. If once the string has gone and died, will I bring everyone else along with me? Drag them back, drag them back, rest, drag again? Is that me? Or will I be like a lonely old woman on the top of the hill, dead for months until my rotten stench draws worrying faces into my home? Will they ever know? Will they ever realize?

I think The Blonde grows dumber with every cross of her legs.

I think she makes the world dumber with her.

What happened to the days when details brought joy and amazement? What happened to the days where words danced off pages and connected people, and they just got it? No one gets it. They are glued to their television screens, to dancing pixels of color and drama. I am stuck, just like I said I was. There is no way out.

A glass ceiling. A glass castle. Walls of fire. Rings.

Things I've heard from my childhood come back to me in ways that don't make sense. None of it makes sense.

I wonder if I'm having a mental breakdown. I wonder what that is. I've never had a panic attack, I don't know what they are. All I know is that my thoughts have become my own enemy, and I want nothing more than to escape my own mind. I have lost my sanity filter. Things float around like little yellow bright ducks in bathtubs, random and inappropriate. The order of words distorts. Distorts words the of order.

("First Fig," Edna St. Vincent Millay)

Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963) - bio

Things I Didn't Know I Loved

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) - bio

The Blue-Flag in the Bog

Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) - bio

Song of the Flower

King James Bible

Song of Solomon, Chapter 2
Other translations

Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) - bio

February: Thinking of Flowers

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) - bio

Sunflower Sutra - print and audio

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) - bio

The Daffodils (aka I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud)
and don't forget the Wordsworth Rap

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) - bio

The Reaper and the Flowers

William Carlos Williams (1881-1963) - bio

Asphodel, That Greeny Flower

Jeanette Winterson, in her Preface to Nightwood, wrote that,

"...the work is an important milestone on any map of gay literature-- even though, like all the best books, its power makes nonsense of any categorization of gender or sexuality...Nightwood has neither stereotypes nor caricatures; there is a truth to these damaged hearts that moves us beyond the negative. Humans suffer and, gay or straight, they break thenselves into pieces, blur themselves with drink and drugs...crucify themselves on their own longings, and let's not forget, are crucified by a world that fears the stranger...And yet, there is a dignity in Nora's love for Robin...We are left in no doubt that this love is worthy of greatness."

On the surface, the plot is simple and nearly irrelevant given the sumptuous language and experimental structure of the novel. It is the story of Robin Vote and the people who love her even as she leaves each of them, disheveled and all but destroyed in her wake. The whole is illuminated by the Tiersian seer, Dr. Matthew O'conor, one of the strangest and most brilliant characters in all of literature. Robin marries the Baron Felix Volkbein and they have a son, but Robin cannot endure the confines of marriage and leaves her husband and child for America where she meets her lover, Nora Flood.

"To keep her (in Robin there was this tragic longing to be kept, knowing herself astray) Nora knew now that there was no way but death."

Subsequently, Robin leaves Nora for another woman, the American, Jenny Petherbridge and the pair return to Paris.

"When she fell in love it was with a perfect fury of accumulated dishonesty; she became instantly a dealer in second-hand and therefore incalculable emotions...She was a 'squatter' by instinct."

Jenny and Robin depart for America and Nora, like Felix before her, turns to the good doctor--dressed in drag-- for consolation.

"What will happen now, to me and to her?"
"Nothing...as always. We all go down in battle, but we all come home."

"None of us suffers as much as we should, or loves as much as we say. Love is the first lie; wisdom the last."

"...what did she have? Only your faith in her-- then you took that faith away! You should have kept it always, seeing that it was a myth...the trouble with you is you are not just a myth-maker, you are also a destroyer."

"The uninhabited angel! That is what you have always been hunting!"

Nightwood is thought to be based on Barnes tempestuous relationship with the artist Thelma Wood whom she met and lived with in Paris in 1922. Published in 1936, the novel was met with acclaim but little financial success. Barnes wrote little journalism at the time, became increasingly ill and more dependant on alcohol and the financial support of Peggy Guggenheim. She eventually moved back to New York and remained reclusive for the rest of her life.

While Nightwood is a centerpiece of gay/lesbian literature, Barnes, who was openly bisexual, was ambivalent about her sexuality. "I am not a lesbian," she declared late in life, "I only loved Thelma." But like all great literature Nightwood defies categorization and transcends the boundaries of class and time. As Winterson wrote,

"Nightwood is itself...reading it is like drinking wine with a pearl dissolving in the glass. You have taken in more than you know...From now on, a part of you is pearl-lined."

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a poet and playwright who was a leading member of the Bohemian life of New York's Greenwhich Village in the 1920's. Openly bisexual, she had several affairs with women while a student at Vassar College where she often dressed as a boy and insisted on being called "Vincent."

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII)
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in 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.

Her first book of poems, A Few Figs from Thistles, was published in 1922. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her book of poems, The Harp Weaver. Most renowned for her sonnets, her best collection-- and her most openly erotic-- is Fatal Interview, published in 1931. She married Eugen Boissenvain who managed Millay's career. Their's was an open marriage of twenty-six years-- Millay described herself and her husband as "two bachelors." Boissenvain died in 1949 and Millay died the following year.

Alms
My heart is what it was before,
A house where people come and go;
But it is winter with your love,
The sashes are beset with snow.

I light the lamp and lay the cloth,
I blow the coals to blaze again;
But it is winter with your love,
The frost is thick upon the pane..

I know a winter when it comes:
The leaves are listless on the boughs;
I watched your love a little while,
And brought my plants into the house.

I water them and turn them south,
I snap the dead brown from the stem;
But it is winter with your love,
I only tend and water them.

There was a time I stood and watched
The small, ill-natured sparrows' fray;
I loved the beggar that I fed,
I cared for what he had to say,

I stood and watched him out of sight:
Today I reach around the door
And set a bowl upon the step;
My heart is what it was before,

But it is winter with your love;
I scatter crumbs upon the sill,
And close the window, —and the birds
May take or leave them, as they will.

Bluebeard
This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed... Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see... Look yet again—
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.

First Fig
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.

Love Is Not All
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.
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.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Spring
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

a. Poisonous Bites
b. The Power of Love

[If I were real hardened I would say something here like, "Six of one, half a dozen of the other!" or "Poisonous bites and the power of love are the same thing!" and then I would throw an empty bottle at the ground, but I am not real hardened, so I will not.]

***

POISONOUS BITE STORY NUMBER ONE

When Hardy and I were driving back from lunch, we were having a general discussion about doctors. This progressed--as discussions with Hardy often do--into a random magical story, the telling of which was concluded in the parking lot outside our building, and which nearly led to my lying down in the parking lot and dying: an affect random magical stories stories often have upon me. I practically have to carry an EpiPen around with me some days, to inject myself against my violent reactions to random magical stories. Hardy's story began thusly: "It was worse than the time I was stung by a scorpion." "Wuh buh la la lee lee lee?" I said, and I asked him to continue.

Hardy's story takes place in Kenya, where he was good-doing. [He's a good one, Hardy.]  One night, in a room lit only by the flashlight he held in his hand, Hardy watched as a scorpion crawled into a bag containing all of his clothing. "O GOD HELP ME" thought Hardy, or such as that. He gathered a batch of newspapers, rolled them up into a "death machine", as it were, and killed himself a scorpion. As he did so, the scorpion--with its dying breath, I suppose, though I know little of the respiratory systems of scorpions--stung Hardy in the finger, because it was a little ingrate scorpion whose mother never loved it.

For a few seconds after that, Hardy felt nothing, aside from a slight pinprick sensation during the actual sting. "Perhaps that's all there is to being stung by a scorpion," he thought, and then his legs gave out and he collapsed against the wall and his hand "felt like it was on fire" [here Hardy took his hand off the wheel and held it aloft as though it were, in fact, on fire], and the fiery feeling started going up his arm and his chest hurt! So! "So it's poisonous?" I said. "It's a neurotoxin!" said Hardy, brightly. Anywho, he went into the next room--where the rest of his group was gathered--imparted the details of his situation, panic ensued, they all took off running through the desert [really] to find this missionary doctor who was traveling with them--I mean, good NIGHT, nurse! The doctor gave Hardy medication and talked him down, in a scorpion variation on "Take two of these and call me in the morning."

The next day, Hardy woke to the world slowly. He could already feel the pain hammering away at every part of his body, hammer hammer hammer, hammer and tongs. As he opened his eyes, he saw the doctor crouched over his body, literally waiting to see if Hardy was alive.

"Oh, good!" said the doctor, and walked away.

POISONOUS BITE STORY NUMBER TWO

When Hardy told me this story, it reminded me of another poisonous bite story, one from the ol' "family vault." I visited my grandmother in Missouri at the end of March; the following is something she told me while I was there. I don't know how I survived so long without knowing this story, or how I made a life for myself, or got out of bed in the morning.

The tale takes place in Missouri, on the small farm of my great-grandparents, during the Great Depression. [Why don't ALL of my stories start like that? I'd be a MILLIONAIRE.] My great-grandmother, pregnant at the time, was picking berries [really] outside their little home, and my great-grandfather was working in the fields. And along comes a snake--slithering along like butter wouldn't melt in its mouth!--and bites my great-grandmother in the leg. She screamed--wouldn't you?-- and my great-grandfather, hearing this, ran to her aid. And do you know what he did?  Do you KNOW what he DID? He took out his pocketknife, cut the bite open, and sucked the poison out of her wound.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala

She would have died, no doubt, so it's a good thing that her husband was the most awesome human being alive, a claim I dare anyone to dispute. Truly, it's thrilling to think that I'm descended from someone who would do that. I hope that I would do the same, if my husband was bit by a snake while picking berries. "Hold still," I hope I would say. "That snake poison is going to wish it was never born."

"Um, why were you picking berries?" I might add, but not until I was sure that he was out of danger.

In the past few years, I've fallen into the habit of noting certain acts, and saying of them: "That's love." Of this story, I would say: that's love. That's what love is. A pocketknife! So help me God, a pocketknife.

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry--
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable--
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry--
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

An Ancient Gesture

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (a genius)

Edna St. Vincent Millay, born in 1892 in Maine, grew to become one of the premier twentieth-century lyric poets. She was also an accomplished playwright and speaker who often toured giving readings of her poetry. All of that was in her public life, but her private life was equally interesting. An unconventional childhood led into an unconventional adulthood. She was an acknowledged bisexual who carried on many affairs with women, an affection for which is sometimes evident in her poems and plays. She did marry, but even that part of her life was somewhat unusual, with the marriage being quite open, and extramarital affairs, though not documented, quite probable.
At the young age of seven, Edna's mother asked her husband to leave the family home. After that point he held a negligible role in the girls' life. Edna and her two sisters moved, with their mother, to Newburyport, Massachusetts where, to Edna's delight, she was given piano lessons. Edna (who insisted on being called Vincent and who even entered writing contests under that name) and her sisters were encouraged in their literary and musical leanings by their mother. Then, in high school, Millay's interests expanded to include theater. She performed in numerous plays and wrote a Halloween play for her classmates to act out.
Millay enjoyed her free-spirited childhood and adolescence and the creativity that it inspired. At the age of twenty, she entered her poem "Renascence" into a poetry contest for the The Lyric Year, a contest from which 100 poems were to be chosen to be published. It was, at first, overlooked as being too simplistic. However, one of the judges took a second look at it and the poem, now one of her most well known, ended up winning fourth place. It was that poem which really started her on her literary career, beginning with a scholarship to the then all female college of Vassar.
Millay kept up her writing, both poetic and dramatic while at Vassar. It was during this time that she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her book The Harp-Weaver and other Poems. Also during her college career she broadened her sexual horizons to include relationships with women. The most notable of these affairs was one with the English actress Wynne Matthison. Matthison was not the only woman she was involved with, and she kept in contact with some of them throughout her life.
Millay's first book of poetry Renascence and Other Poems was published in 1917 and well received. Then, A Few Figs from Thistles, was published in 1922 and sparked some attention as well as controversy with its feminist leanings. In particular the poems within maintained that the sexual freedom formerly comandeered by men was equally valid for women. This feeling is particularly obvious in the sonnet beginning "What lips my lips have kissed,"
Keep in mind that all of this was accomplished during Millay's college years! After graduation the woman moved to Greenwich Village in New York, a particularly free-thinking and artistic borough. She kept up her writing as well as her involvements with women, but also began to take men as lovers tho it would seem that none of them were able to "sway" her from her natural lesbian leanings.
The following paragraph is quoted from another web page dedicated to Edna St.Vincent Millay (http://www.sappho.com/cgi-bin/imagemap/maps/e_millay.map is the main page).

In Great Companions, Max Eastman relates an interesting story about Millay that, if true, reveals something of her attitude about own sexuality. According to Eastman, while at a cocktail party Millay discussed her recurrent headaches with a psychologist. He asked her, "I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that you might perhaps, although you are hardly conscious of it, have an occasional impulse toward a person of your own sex?" She responded, "Oh, you mean I'm homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual, too, but what's that got to do with my headache?"

Millay did eventually marry, Eugen Boissevain, who managed her career and was a great source of support. The marriage, as mentioned above, was agreed to be open and Millay herself said that they maintained their personal freedom, living more as great friends than as husband and wife. Millay, a smoker in an age of smokers, succumbed to heart failure in 1950 at her home, Steepletop, in Austerlitz New York. Boissevain, who was considerably older, had died the previous year.

http://members.aol.com/MillayGirl/millay.htm

Updated our little Web site be

With notes from our last reverie

Of dressing and undressing free

And of mystery that perplexes me.

Our next meeting already set

On February 24 at 4 don't fret.

A light repast awaits, you can bet.

Have I disappointed yet?

Then while our appetites we sate

With abundance from the plate

We shall give over to our fate.

With poems about food, let us celebrate.

This Is What I Say
I have updated
the site
that is on
the Internet

and which
you were probably
waiting
to read

Thank you
Your poems were delicious
so sweet
and so bold

Inviting a Friend to Supper

This Is Just to Say - audio

To a Poor Old Woman  - audio

Feast

Figs

Another Apple

Summer Kitchen

Crab and Catfish

To a Goose

The Clean Plater

Ode to Tomatoes

Ode to Maize

Ode to an Onion

Deep in Our Refrigerator

Eating Together

Point of View

If Walt Whitman Had Written Humpty Dumpty

The Invention of Cuisine

From Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Music is "Celebration" by Mark Heimonen from the Podsafe Music Network.

Photo credit: Sailboat at sunset by villoks

L'INVITATION AU VOYAGE
Mon enfant, ma soeur,
Songe à la douceur
D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble!
Les soleils mouillés
De ces ciels brouillés
Pour mon esprit ont les charmes
Si mystérieux
De tes traîtres yeux,
Brillant à travers leurs larmes.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

Des meubles luisants,
Polis par les ans,
Décoreraient notre chambre;
Les plus rares fleurs
Mêlant leurs odeurs
Aux vagues senteurs de l'ambre,
Les riches plafonds,
Les miroirs profonds,
La splendeur orientale,
Tout y parlerait
À l'âme en secret
Sa douce langue natale.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

Vois sur ces canaux
Dormir ces vaisseaux
Dont l'humeur est vagabonde;
C'est pour assouvir
Ton moindre désir
Qu'ils viennent du bout du monde.
--Les soleils couchants
Revêtent les champs,
Les canaux, la ville entière,
D'hyacinthe et d'or;
Le monde s'endort
Dans une chaude lumière.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

--Charles Baudelaire


INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE
Think, would it not be
Sweet to live with me
All alone, my child, my love? --
Sleep together, share
All things, in that fair
Country you remind me of?
Charming in the dawn
There, the half-withdrawn
Drenched, mysterious sun appears
In the curdled skies,
Treacherous as your eyes
Shining from behind their tears.

There, restraint and order bless
Luxury and voluptuousness.

We should have a room
Never out of bloom:
Tables polished by the palm
Of the vanished hours
Should reflect rare flowers
In that amber-scented calm;
Ceilings richly wrought,
Mirrors deep as thought,
Walls with eastern splendor hung,
All should speak apart
To the homesick heart
In its own dear native tongue.

There, restraint and order bless
Luxury and voluptuousness.

See, their voyage past,
To their moorings fast,
On the still canals asleep,
These big ships; to bring
You some trifling thing
They have braved the furious deep.
--Now the sun goes down,
Tinting dyke and town,
Field, canal, all things in sight,
Hyacinth and gold;
All that we behold
Slumbers in its ruddy light.

There, restraint and order bless
Luxury and voluptuousness.

Translation by Edna St. Vincent Millay

How shall I know, unless I go

To Cairo and Cathay,

Whether or not this blessèd 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!

– Edna St. Vincent Millay

da L'amore non è cieco, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Crocetti

 - Il filosofo -

Cosa sarai mai tu che ti desidero

da rimanere insonne tante notti

quanti i giorni che esistono

a piangere per te?

Cosa sarai mai tu che, se mi manchi,

nell'intreccio dei giorni io resto sempre

intenta al vento

e fissa alla parete?

Conosco un uomo di migliore tempra

e almeno venti altrettanto gentili.

Che cos'hai di speciale tu per essere

il solo che possieda la mia mente?

Le donne non ragionano, si sa -

lo dicono anche i saggi -

ed io che cosa sono, perchè debba

amare in modo giusto e razionale?

(Drupal 21.09.2007)