Great Gay Poets Friday! Edna St. Vincent Millay

Editor’s Note:

This is the third post in honor of National Poetry Month, thanks to guest blogger Julia Garbowski, who conceived the idea and has done an excellent job sharing with us some of her favorites, including last week’s Oscar Wilde and Hart Crane, and in her first piece, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. This week, Julia looks at several poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

I try to imagine what it might have been like for a lesbian or bisexual woman in 1920 when Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote the poem Witch-Wife. I have the words in front of me to help me imagine, and the memory of my grandmother, who was born when Millay was 14 years old. From my grandmother I have stories she told me, this book of poems, I have a silver letter opener, a fur collar, teacups, a rolling pin, and a tasseled piano cover. Pictures of her and other family women are always in dresses, long coats, hats, carefully posed in a chair or standing in front of a house; –except for one, the one with my grandmother, wanting to be with the boys…in her overalls, with a leafy turnip her hand.

Witch-Wife

She is neither pink nor pale,

And she will never be all mine,

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,

And her mouth on a valentine.
She has more hair than she needs,

In the sun ‘tis a woe to me!

And her voice is a string of colored beads,

Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,

And her ways to my ways resign;

But she was not made for any man,

And she will never be all mine.

Millay was born in the small Maine coastal town of Rockland. She asked to be called Vincent, and began writing poems in her teens. At 19, her long poem “Renascence” attracted a sponsor who paid for her to attend Vassar College. After college she moved to Greenwich Village to write. She was an active suffragist and was considered bisexual at the time; she married Eugen Jan Boissevain on the condition that they have an open marriage. She and her husband had relationships outside their marriage but remained devoted to each other for 27 years until they died within a year of each other, in 1949 and 1950. Millay’s relationships with women included a love affair with British actress Wynne Matthison.

Sonnet IV

I shall forget you presently, my dear,

So make the most of this, your little day,

Your little month, your little half a year,

Ere I forget, or die, or move away,

And we are done forever; by and by

I shall forget you, as I said, but now,

If you entreat me with your loveliest lie

I will protest you with my favorite vow.

I would indeed that love were longer-lived,

And vows were not so brittle as they are,

But so it is, and nature has contrived

To struggle on without a break thus far,

Whether or not we find what we are seeking

Is idle, biologically speaking.

Fellow writer and Greenwich Village resident Max Eastman wrote that “Vincent” replied to a NY doctor “Oh, you mean I am a homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual, too, but what has that got to do with my headache?”

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!

In 1923 she became the first woman to win a Pulitzer in poetry for her poem “The Harp Weaver.” Her career had ups and downs and included somewhat of a decline in later years including a nervous breakdown in 1944. She was interested in politics, social injustices, and women’s rights. For more “Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St Vincent Millay” by Nancy Milford (Random House NY 2003); “The Poet and Her Book” by Jean Gould (Dodd, Mead 1969); “Restless Spirit: The Life of Edna St Vincent Millay” by Miriam Gurko (Crowell NY 1962).

City Trees

The trees along this city street,

Save for the traffic and the trains,

Would make a sound as thin and sweet

As trees in country lanes.

And people standing in their shade

Out of a shower, undoubtedly

Would hear such music as is made

Upon a country tree.

Oh, little leaves that are so dumb

Against the shrieking city air,

I watch you when the wind has come,

–I know what sound is there.

Julia Garbowski lives in Royal Oak, MI and has returned to writing after 25 years of running a farm and market in Door County WI. She grew up in Sag Harbor, NY. Her B.A. in Communications is from the University of Wisconsin. She belongs to the Michigan Literary Network and her twitter name is @driftnotes.

(Images: top: Emily Dickinson, bottom: Edna St. Vincent Millay)