[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Maybe I should clarify one of my statements: I believe Millay's ability to structure a sonnet-like argument compares favorably with the poets I mentioned. I only wish she had used a broader palette.

Curtis.

[Barbara Loots]

Greetings, Alicia, and everyone.

I can't believe it has taken me this long to find out that there are excellent conversations going on here. Now I'm duly registered, and this will be my first post (if the thing works, that is). Thank you, Gail White, my friend, for the clue.

Re Millay: Still on my bookshelf, more than 40 years later, is a battered blue paperback, the Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay. It was one of two poetry books I purchased in high school--one of those club deals--the other being Palgreave's Golden Treasury. I'm forever in her debt for delighting the heart of a girl "poetess" in love with love and meter. I've never recovered.

At that time, of course, rhyme and meter were already "yesterday" in academia. But no one could make me not love those poems. And they led me on.

Thanks to all posters for your reflections.

[Gail White]

I've read the Nancy Milford biography, "Savage
Beauty", with great enjoyment. I'm delighted to
find that it's fashionable to like Edna Millay
again. Edna and I have been riding back and
forth all night on the ferry for many years.
And though there have been times when I've
wondered why "Afternoon on a Hill" is so damned
famous, I always fall back with pleasure on
"The Poet and His Book," or the ever-delightful
discovery that Agatha's Arth is a hug-the-
hearth, but my true love is false.

------------------

[David Anthony]

I've lately been rereading Edna's Collected Sonnets, and it's struck me for the first time how many of her early sonnets I like, and how few of her later ones.
The early ones are fresh, passionate, with the occasional quirky archaism or metrical variation that serve to point up their appeal.
The later ones lack the freshness, and the archaisms and quirkiness are obtrusive, mannered rather than charming. I believe quite a number of them would get a pasting if posted anonymously at Erato.
For me, you only need to write one great poem to be a great poet (eg Bowles); and Edna wrote perhaps a dozen, which puts her up there with Wordsworth.
But I wonder, maybe the decline in her reputation in her later years was more to do with the deteriorating quality of her work, and less with her traditionalism.
Just a thought.

[Roger Slater]

Rhina, thanks for posting the "What lips" sonnet. Mine is not a novel take, I'm sure, but it's always been my favorite of her poems. I'll never forget where I first heard the last two lines you so rightly single out. It was years ago on television, of all places. Dick Cavett was interviewing a very old Henry Miller and asking him, in effect, how he felt about being so old. His answer was to recite the concluding couplet of the Millay sonnet. It was extremely moving. And it led me to the entire sonnet, which in the early days of the internet I proceeded to praise on a newgroup and had to withstand amazing quantitites of derision from educated folk who insisted the poem was crap. I'm glad the internet has progressed to the point that Millay fans dominate the bandwidth.

[wendy v]

I love Millay.

I've loved this thread.

I love this place.

Amen.

[Annie Finch]

Of all people, Henry Miller to quote a Millay sonnet on TV! That is a priceless anecdote!! I have just remembered my early enthusiasm for Miller and forgiven him all the things for which I got angry at him later. Thank you Roger.