RENASCENCE by Edna St. Vincent Millay, was, I know, considered a groundbreaking classic in its time, and a treasured book of my mom's, but sorry, Mom. I read the whole book in about forty minutes. I just couldn't relate to all the gloom and doom, and the stilted, archaic rhyming that, to me, was reminiscent of Poe. For me it was just barely an 'okay.' I have my mother's 1917 hardback (first?) edition of the book, published by Harper & Brothers. Content-wise I couldn't recommend it. But I wonder if it's valuable.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

The earliest poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Renascence: rebirth. In this poem about the freedom of the soul, Millay begins with a narrator who is measuring the limitations of his world and wishing for freedom. But when the restraints are lifted, the narrator wishes for death, and following death, for life again. Millay takes the reader through the experience of these changes, recognizing at last that limitations only exist within the person and can be overcome, even within the confines imposed by the outside world.

The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.


Interim: A poem of grief and survival that struck at a part of my heart that I sometimes try to keep closed. It begins with the poet entering a room that contains a memory of the person lost, “The room is full of you!” and proceeds through the hopeless grief to a kind of faith in tomorrow, the burden of survival.

You are not here. I know that you are gone;
And will not ever enter here again.
And yet it seems to me, if I should speak,
Your silent step must wake across the hall;

And further on:

We were so wholly one I had not thought
That we could die apart. I had not thought
That I could move,--and you be stiff and still!
That I could speak,--and you perforce be dumb!

I believe anyone who has lost a very significant person, particularly a husband or a lover, to death, would understand and feel this poem in a very personal way. And, what is poetry, if not personal?

The Suicide: A sober look at suicide and the consequences on the soul as told from the point of view of the suicide himself.

God’s World: An acclamation of nature.

Afternoon on a Hill: Simple and effective. I quite love it:

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind blow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!

The remaining poems are at turns immature, ineffective, maudlin or sweet, but they all show the promise that at length became a great poet.


( )

Millay is a poet I never paid attention to. Perhaps it was her name. "Edna St. Vincent Millay" sounds like one of those high-minded matrons who might cringe if you use the sugar spoon to stir your tea and then put it back in the bowl. When I read Edmund Wilson’s The Twenties, I learned that its author was hopelessly in love with this elusive, willowy red-head; I became curious to read some of her work.
This, her first collection, was where I decided to start. It's a slim volume that took little more than an hour to read, even though I slowly savored it. All of the poems are good, some of them masterpieces. The title piece in particular, with its vivid description of a mystical experience, left me in awe. ( )

Like him who day by day unto his draught
Of delicate poison adds him one drop more
Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten,
Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed
Each hour more deeply than the hour before,
I drink—and live—what has destroyed some men.

While I enjoyed "Renascence" and the longer poems that constitute the first half of this book, it was the closing six sonnets, especially "Bluebeard," that bumped the collection from three stars to four. Millay's style retains much of the formality and passion of the 19th century Romantics, but interjects perspectives that reflect a Modern aesthetic. In this way, she reminds me of Frost and other poets who bridged Modernism and Romanticism. ( )

I don't know why I bought this book years ago. Maybe because I'd heard the name Edna St. Vincent Millay, and yet had never read or heard a single one of her poems. While skimming through "Books of the Century," this title caught my eye and I remembered that I had "Renascence and Other Poems" somewhere among the thousands of books on my shelves. After some searching it appeared, paper slightly yellowing (it is a $1 Dover edition), I sat down and read the poems--on some I lingered, others were quickly digested.

The general themes are: Death, Loss, Nature. Poetry is a crapshoot for me--either I like a poem immensely, feel it as a tangible thing or I don't get it. That is, I understand the words, even the images, maybe even the idea, but just don't feel what is so special about a particular poem. So with this collection--some of the poems resonated as an auditory, visual and emotional thing, others...were just there. At first I thought, "OK, now I've read these poems, I can donate the book and free up some shelf space", but now, the next day, I feel a need to hold on to the book and delve back into the poems that lingered in my subconscience, like a memory vague, but compelling. ( )