Edna St. Vincent Millay Analysis

Edna St. Vincent Millay

“ My candle burns at both ends” (Miller). A candle burning at both ends symbolizes a person ceaselessly working day and night, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth century women worked around the clock. At age 20, Vincent E. Millay penned “ Renascence “, one of her most well- known poems. Edna received the Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1923, and was also the third woman to win the award for poetry. Her most popular phrase was in her book “ The Ballad of the Harp Weaver “. Edna was known for her feminist activism. Edna St. Vincent Millay, American poet and playwright, uses her writing to explore ideas, feminism, assertiveness, and sexuality.

Edna Millay was an American poet and playwright. Millay also wrote verse dramas,

“ And all at once things seemed so small / my breath came short, and scarce at all” (“Renascence”15-16). She is the only one who will take care of herself. She had to be strong in a man’s world because she had no one to count on. As the world pushes her down, she has to fight back and stand for herself. In “ Renascence “ Edna talks about how bold she had to be for herself in life. “ The sky, I thought is not so grand; / I’ most could touch it with my hand! “(“Renascence” 25-26). Millay provides a grid for ecstatic experience—that sense of immediacy previously discussed. The person is first enmeshed in horizontal logic, bounded by the earthly panorama, and then caught up in the vertical drama; both floating above and dwellings below states of consciousness prove painful. After getting through the hard part in life, she made it. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. She has to be self- sufficient because she has to be as strong as a mountain and was able to stand up for herself. The author haunts the world and is haunted by it and then finds relief by encountering

sexuality. Millay expresses that love is not an object nor does it help when it falls within her sonnet “ love is not all”. She writes “ 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,” (“Love is not all” 3-5). She realizes that love has its difficulties and one cannot force love. However Millay realizes that love is something she would cherish wouldn 't trade for anything in the world. Consequently she also understood that sex is interpreted as love. There were moments that she has had with other people sexually. But yet was never satisfied, felt empty, and never got the feeling she was hoping for. As she writes “I have forgotten, and what arms have lain/ Under my head till morning; but the rain” (“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” 2-3). Millay shows that individuals can be caught in the moment of lust and not with love. If a person has experienced being with someone who they don’t love or only exist in the lust they become full of regrets. “ I cannot say what loves have come and gone,/ I only know that summer sang in me” (“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” 12-13). Edna remembers a little about love but no longer feels it. She has also most likely missed out on a chance of love that has come her way. There are times when you hope to work things out, but when the love wasn’t there, nor the feeling then there