Savage Beauty

I am a fairly literate fellow who has read quite a few classics in my day, but for some reason I have always had trouble reading poetry. Whenever I try my eyes glaze over after just a few lines. But I have always enjoyed the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. I think I first took an interest in her when I heard the poem Conscientious Objector, which begins, "I shall die, but that is all I shall do for death." Her most famous poem is, "My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night. But ah, my friends, and oh, my foes, it makes a lovely light!"

Millay's life was as interesting, if not more so, than her poems, and I have had Nancy Milford's biography of her, Savage Beauty, on my bookshelf for quite a while but finally got around to reading it. It is an excellent book, handling her personal life as well as discussing her work. Millay was primarily a lyric poet (perhaps that is why she is easier to read), but lived the life of a Bohemian and had a very sad end.

She was born in Maine in 1892 in humble surroundings but through the assistance of some well-placed women in society attended Vassar. While still in school she won a prize for a poem called Renascence that made her something of a name. All while reading this book I was amazed that a person could actually become famous and earn a living as a poet, which is practically impossible today. Millay won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922, and by 1938 she was famous all across America, in fact, she was listed in a poll as one of the ten most famous women in the U.S. Her books sold well and she toured the country doing readings, as well as reciting on the radio.

Millay also was part of the Provincetown Players, rubbing elbows in Greenwich Village with John Reed, Louise Bryant, and Eugene O'Neill, and one of her early lovers was Floyd Dell. Millay had lovers of both sexes, and was a tad on the promiscuous side. She married a businessman, Eugen Boissevant, in 1923, but that didn't entirely stop her, as she had a long love affair with poet George Dillon, who was quite a bit younger than her.

By the 1940's Millay began to crumble under the weight of alcoholism and an increasing dependency on a variety of drugs, particularly methadone. She and her husband lived in a house they called Steepletop in upstate New York, and her husband babied her, driving a wedge between her and her sisters. Her husband died of lung cancer in 1949, and she died a year later, falling down a flight of stairs.

One of her sisters, Norma, was still alive while Milford began the project and gave her complete access to Millay's letters and papers. Much of the book cites letters, and one wonders how some biographies would be possible without them. At times Milford breaks from the narrative to include an aside between herself and Norma, perhaps most amusingly when Norma recounts how Edna told her about masturbation.

My only misgiving about the book is that I wanted more. Milford ends, as one might expect, with Millay's death, but I would have liked to know a little more about her legacy and the reactions of her family and friends to her death. But to criticize a book for saying you want more is a kind of praise, I imagine.