Preview

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1143 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay, a poet and playwright
, was best known for her lyrical poetry. She wrote many poems, on topics such as love, fidelity, erotic desire, and feminist issues. The part of Millay that wasn't highly publicized is that she addressed herself as a bisexual and had many affairs with woman before her marriage. It is not said if she continued sexual involments with women after her marriage (though it is quite possible), nor it is not said which of her poems are written about women rather than men.

Edna St. Vincent Millay grew up in a different sort of family. Born February 22, 1892 in Rockland, Maine, and the oldest of three daughters of Henry Tolman Millay and Cora Lounella (Buzelle) Millay. When Edna was around the age eight her mother divorced her father. After the divorce her mother worked as a nurse to support the family. Her mother encouraged Edna and her sisters to study music and literature and urged them to be independent and ambitious.

Edna's first published poem "Forest Trees." Written when she was fourteen, appeared in St. Nicholas Magazine (October 1906). With in the next four years, St. Nicholas published five more of her poems one of which, "The Land of Romance" received a gold badge of the St. Nicholas League and later was reprinted in Current Literature (April 1907). In 1912 "Renascence" one of Millays poems was anthologized in The Lyric Year and met with critical acclaim.

When Millay's poems were published she gained literary recognition and earned a scholarship to Vassar. At Vassar she continued to write poetry and became involved in the theater. In 1922 one of her plays The Harp Weaver was awarded the Palitzer Prize. Millay also published a book of poems in 1922 called "A Few Figs from Thistles" in this volume, she described female sexuality in a way that gained her much attention, as she put fourth the idea that a women has every right to sexual pleasure and no

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Bessie Coleman Role Model

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Bessie Coleman was born January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas to a poor family of sharecroppers. She was one of thirteen children of Susan and George Coleman. According to Roni Morales:…

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I believe that Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672), made major contributions to early American Literature through her poetry. Her poems stressed the daily struggles and stress of Puritan life. Bradstreet had struggled with the validity of the Scriptures, but through her life experiences she developed a strong belief in God. Bradstreet paved the way for future female writers. She used her poetry and writing skills to break through the stereotypes and the strict moral code that was placed on women in her time. Bradstreet, with the help of her brother-n-law, had her manuscript of poetry printed in London in 1650. “The Tenth Muse” was the first collection of poems written by an American resident. Bradstreet was better known for her writings that detailed her daily life and her relationship with her family. She describes in great detail the relationships she had with her father, husband, children and even her grandchildren.…

    • 905 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Audrey was born on May 4, 1929 in Brussels, Belgium (biography). Her mother Ella Van Heemstra Ruston was a Dutch aristocrat who also did volunteer work. Her father was John Victor Hepburn-Ruston, an Anglo Irish Banker (timeline). Audrey also had two sons, Sean Hepburn Ferrer who is currently fifty-five years old and Lucca Dotti who is currently forty-five years…

    • 1598 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    might betray her mind. Two of her poems known as “We grow accustomed to the Dark” and…

    • 581 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    describes the symbolic and rhetorical patterns that many of her early poems share, and goes on…

    • 2847 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bessie Coleman

    • 1376 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 to Susan and George Coleman who had a large family in Texas. At the time of Bessie's birth, her parents had already been married for seventeen years and already had nine children, Bessie was the tenth, and she would later have twelve brothers and sisters. Even when she was small, Bessie had to deal with issues about race. Her father was of African American and Cherokee Indian decent, and her mother was black which made it difficult from the start for her to be accepted. Her parents were sharecroppers and her life was filled with renter farms and continuous labor. Then, when Bessie was two, her father decided to move himself and his family to Waxahacie, Texas. He thought that it would offer more opportunities for work, if he were to live in a cotton town.…

    • 1376 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Maya Angelou’s life was a roller coaster. Through her upside down loops and her cork screws, she made a high living for herself. She achieved awarding accomplishments. Maya is not only one of the most famous poets in the world but, she was also a literature writer, a dancer, actress and a singer. She wrote children books and she was also one of the first African American women to have an original screenplay produced called Georgia. She won the National Book Award, A Pulitzer Prize and is listed as one of the one hundred most influential women in the world. She was also the first African American to have a nonfiction book on the best sellers list Maya was big into the civil rights movement. Maya got involved with helping Malcom X with his…

    • 463 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Anne and Abigail were born in different generations but they both were ahead of their time and were free thinkers. Bradstreet was the first female poet that was published. Being puritan wife she believed in God and expressed herself through her poems. However; she was a free thinker and she understood that writing poems was not a female thing. In her poem The Prologue she wrote:…

    • 1040 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    From the moment she was born, her parents knew that Audrey would grow up to be someone special. She was born May 4, 1929, in Belgium. Originally, her name was Andrey Ruston, but later changed it to Audrey Hepburn for a professional name. Even as a child, she went through…

    • 1106 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hughes who was a poet himself was less known for his work and known more for his affairs. She was often compared to his other women, even in her death was her name still used in vain of his mistakes. Ted Hughes was sleeping with other poets, the most infamous was Assia Wevill who sadly also killed herself and the daughter she and Ted Hughes had the same way Sylvia herself ended her life. For a long time till this day Sylvia Plath is labeled as a depressed artist and Assia as the mistress. Ted Hughes tarnished two careers that women worked so hard to built. To say that Sylvia Plath’s sadness came from the affair would be ignorant to ignore the fact that Plath was battling an inner demon of mental illness almost all her life. Ted Hughes wrote in his collection called Birthday Letters. "Fame cannot be avoided. And when it comes / you will have paid for it with your happiness, / your husband and your life." As to blame her suicide on her face, the one thing she worked so hard to build was the thing to destroy her. Ted Hughes is obviously wrong and oblivious that Plath’s success was her voice, that she I believe even in her death wouldn’t want anyone or any man to speak for her, she let her literature do that for…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Mill’s essay shows how much he valued all people of society and his view that all people deserve equal freedom and rights. Women giving the chance to have equality would not relinquish their roles as wives and mothers besides a select few, but they would have the freedom to choose their lives and more of a sense of control over their own destinies. He believed that to have a happy and functional society there must be equality for all. He was an advocate for all who were oppressed in life.…

    • 1258 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Being oppressed by their male counterparts, women were extremely disgruntled. As the quote explains, Anne Bradstreet’s “poetry must have been her outlet for her discontent.”…

    • 421 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Puritan Essay

    • 466 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Anne Bradstreet was born and raised into a house of a puritan nobleman, her father. When she began life on her own, she started to write poems. She was the first to come out with a volume of poems and also the first American woman poet ever at this time. Her poems usually consisted of her family, medicine, and fires but she also wrote about her puritan beliefs that one must not become too attached to things of this world. (pg. 26 Anne Bradstreet 1612-1672)…

    • 466 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson

    • 909 Words
    • 4 Pages

    During her time as a normal student, she met a few very influential men, Reverend Charles Wadsworth and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. They had a huge effect on her life, as well as her poems. She met others, Samuel Bowles and J.G.…

    • 909 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Mill Poem Analysis

    • 2268 Words
    • 10 Pages

    The characters in “The Mill” seem complex to the sense that they do not have names to identify themselves. Names are known as something personal, especially with names having a special meaning. However, these characters do not have that. As mentioned before, they are only addressed by their occupation. The man in the poem is identified as “the miller” and the woman in the poem as “the miller’s wife.” Now, in today’s norm, being a wife is not an occupation; however, in the time period that this poem was written, it certainly…

    • 2268 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays

Related Topics