"Oh oh you will be sorry for that word!"

"What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why"

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Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!"

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why”

Roaring Twenties - Wikipedia

roaring 20s
American lyrical poet
renowned social figure
feminist
wrote much of her prose and hackwork verse under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd.

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry(1923)
Ballad of the Harp-Weaver
the first woman and second person to win the award.

Robert Frost Medal(1943)
the sixth person and the second woman to be awarded the Frost Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry.

Reception

Millay was highly regarded during much of her lifetime, with the prominent literary critic Edmund Wilson calling her "one of the only poets writing in English in our time who have attained to anything like the stature of great literary figures.''

By the 1930s, her critical reputation began to decline, as modernist critics dismissed her work for its use of traditional poetic forms and subject matter, in contrast to modernism's exhortation to "make it new." However, the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1960s and 1970s revived an interest in Millay's works

Encouraged to read the classics at home, she was too rebellious to make a success of formal education, but she won poetry prizes from an early age.

1904 divorced for domestic abuse and financial irresponsibility
her mom and three children lived in proverty and moved constantly from town to town
classical literature : including Shakespeare and Milton

The family settled in a small house on the property of Cora's aunt in Camden, Maine, where Millay would write the first of the poems that would bring her literary fame.

At Camden High School, Millay began developing her literary talents, starting at the school's literary magazine, The Megunticook. At 14, she won the St. Nicholas Gold Badge for poetry, and by 15, she had published her poetry in the popular children's magazine St. Nicholas, the Camden Herald, and the high-profile anthology Current Literature

Millay's fame began in 1912 when, at the age of 20, she entered her poem "Renascence" in a poetry contest in The Lyric Year.

According to the remaining judges, the winning poem had to exhibit social relevance, and "Renascence" did not. Millay ultimately placed fourth.

The press drew attention to the fact that the Millays were a family of working-class women living in poverty. Because the three winners were men, some people felt that sexism and classism were a factor
The outcome caused controversy in Newspaper. The winner got hate mail and later saying that the prize was as much an embarrassment to him as a triumph

In the immediate aftermath of the Lyric Year controversy, wealthy arts patron Caroline B. Dow heard Millay reciting her poetry and playing the piano at the Whitehall Inn in Camden, Maine and was so impressed that she offered to pay for Millay's education at Vassar College.

Millay entered Vassar College in 1913 at age 21

Before she attended college, Millay had a liberal home life that included smoking, drinking, playing gin rummy, and flirting with men. Vassar, on the other hand, expected its students to be refined and live according to their status as young ladies.

She was a prominent campus writer, becoming a regular contributor to The Vassar Miscellany. She had relationships with many fellow students during her time there and kept scrapbooks including drafts of plays written during the period.

While at school, she had several romantic relationships with women, including Edith Wynne Matthison, who would go on to become an actress in silent films.

After she graduated from Vassar in 1917, Millay moved to New York City. She lived in Greenwich Village just as it was becoming known as a bohemian writers' haven.

childhood and early emerging to fame
Camden High School and Vassar College
School publication

While in New York City, Millay was openly bisexual, developing passing relationships with men and women
write plays

During her stay in Greenwich Village, Millay learned to use her poetry for her feminist activism. She often went into detail about topics others found taboo, such as a wife leaving her husband in the middle of the night.[16] .

Millay's 1920 collection A Few Figs From Thistles drew controversy for its exploration of female sexuality and feminism.[28] She engaged in highly successful nationwide tours in which she offered public readings of her poetry

To support her days in the Village, Millay wrote short stories for Ainslee's Magazine. As an aesthete and a canny protector of her identity as a poet, she insisted on publishing this more mass-appeal work under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd

Steepletop

1921
travel to Paris
became pregnant by a man named Daubigny. She secured a marriage license but instead returned to New England where her mother Cora helped induce an abortion with alkanet, as recommended in her old copy of Culpeper's Complete Herbal. Possibly as a result, Millay was frequently ill and weak for much of the next four years

1923
won Pulitzer Prize for poetry
After experiencing his remarkable attention to her during her illness, she married 43-year-old Eugen Jan Boissevain in 1923.
A self-proclaimed feminist, Boissevain supported Millay's career and took primary care of domestic responsibilities. Both Millay and Boissevain had other lovers throughout their 26-year marriage.

In 1925, Boissevain and Millay bought Steepletop near Austerlitz, New York, which had once been a 635-acre (257 ha) blueberry farm.

1936 accident
Millay was staying at the Sanibel Palms Hotel when, on May 2, 1936, a fire started after a kerosene heater on the second floor exploded. Everything was destroyed, including the only copy of Millay's long verse poem, Conversation at Midnight, and a 1600s poetry collection written by the Roman poet Catullus of the first century BC

In the summer of 1936, Millay was riding in a station wagon when the door suddenly swung open, and Millay “was hurled out into the pitch-darkness...and rolled for some distance down a rocky gully."
The accident severely damaged nerves in her spine. Millay lived the rest of her life in "constant pain"

1940
During World War I, she had been a dedicated and active pacifist; however, in 1940, she advocated for the U.S. to enter the war against the Axis and became an ardent supporter of the war effort
She later worked with the Writers' War Board to create propaganda, including poetry.Millay's reputation in poetry circles was damaged by her war work.

Despite the excellent sales of her books in the 1930s, her declining reputation, constant medical bills, and frequent demands from her mentally ill sister Kathleen meant that for most of her last years, Millay was in debt to her own publisher. also spent money on horse-racing

Millay died at her home on October 19, 1950, at age 58. She had fallen down the stairs and was found with a broken neck approximately eight hours after her death. Her physician reported that she had suffered a heart attack following a coronary occlusion.

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