An illuminating portrait of the accomplished poet describes the life and work of an American woman whose love poetry transformed a generation of writers, drawing on letters, diaries, and journals of the poet and her various lovers that capture the liberated world of a woman whose life was dedicated to art and love. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
Describes the life and work of an American woman whose love poetry transformed a generation of writers, drawing on letters, diaries, and journals to depict the world of a woman whose life was dedicated to art and love.
This is the story of a rare sort of American genius, a young girl from Camden, Maine, who used her pen as a key to open doors to the wider world. Raised in a female, theatrics-loving household, the sensitive child harbored a talent for words, music, and drama and an inexorable desire to be loved. When Edna St. Vincent Millay was twenty, her poetry would make her famous; at thirty she would be loved by readers the world over.
She was widely considered to be the most seductive woman of her age. Few men could resist her, and many women also fell under her spell. From the publication of her first poems until the scandal over Fatal Interview twenty years later, gossip about the poet's liberated lifestyle prompted speculation about who might be the real subject of her verses.
With a poet's insight, Daniel Mark Epstein re-creates the events and ideas that led to Millay's precocious masterpiece "Renascence," published when she was just nineteen. His detective work exposes the affair between the young poet and the middle-aged editor Arthur Hooley, who encouraged her sexual adventures at Vassar. Epstein has also discovered love letters from the poet George Dillon illuminating the romance that threatened Millay's marriage, and a cache of correspondence concerning the poet's surprising obsession and success with thoroughbred horse racing.
This is the story of a rare sort of American genius, who grew up in grinding poverty in Camden, Maine. Nothing could save the sensitive child but her talent for words, music, and drama, and an inexorable desire to be loved. When she was twenty, her poetry would make her famous; at thirty she would be loved by readers the world over.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was widely considered to be the most seductive woman of her age. Few men could resist her, and many women also fell under her spell. From the publication of her first poems until the scandal over Fatal Interview twenty years later, gossip about the poet's liberated lifestyle prompted speculation about who might be the real subject of her verses.
Using letters, diaries, and journals of the poet and her lovers that have only recently become available, Daniel Mark Epstein tells the astonishing story of the life, dedicated to art and love, that inspired the sublime lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay.