Thread: Are you giving Edna St. Vincent Millay her Propers?

She was the first Femaleto win the Pulitzer in Literature in 1923, which is amazing considering the oppression of Women Writers at that time.

Here is an example of her work.
I consider it the Worlds most perfect Poem. In structure and content
but more so in her use of metaphors. The way she describes Love as a "Wide blossom which the wind assails" is mind-boggling I think.
The last line in the poem is often quoted by people who have no idea of its origin.

Enjoy.

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Pity Me Not

Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky

Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by

Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Or that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Or that a man's desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me

This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales

Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

Apparantly not.

I hate this part of the Forum

Originally Posted by female_writer

She was the first Female to win the Pulitzer in Literature in 1923, which is amazing considering the oppression of Women Writers at that time.

Were women really oppressed? Or did not as many write? Selma Lageröf had already won the Nobel Prize in Literature years before. And, regarding the Pulitzer, it was only the second year of its existence that she won the thing for poetry. Does that really make it all the more special?

She's pretty much my favorite poet. Renascence put me in her camp for good :^)

Thank you.
For some reason she is one of the lesser known female poets, yet is by far one of the greatest I feel.

Of course reading her life story is a study in tragedy

Thank you.
For some reason she is one of the lesser known female poets, yet is by far one of the greatest I feel.

Of course reading her life story is a study in tragedy

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I agree. Edna St V. is one of my favourites.

When she's good (which is often enough), she's outstanding. Unfortunately I think her sexual orientation and her various eccentricities militated against her becoming better known in her own time.

An incredibly bright, well-educated woman, tho' ... and well worth a good look at both her poetry and her career.

A.

Were women really oppressed?
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I think it's a fair enough question, Stewart.

But you don't have to read too far to find that political, social, economic and health conditions for women in the period 1892-1950 (Millay's dates) were pretty primitive. For instance, to take a very obvious example, while Millay graduated from Vassar in 1917 -(women not being allowed into Harvard at that time), the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which finally made women's suffrage legal, was not passed until 1920.

Most impartial histories of that period (the first half of the 20th C.) make it pretty clear that conditions for women were oppressive in all kinds of ways ... and in many still are.

(The Pulitzer was really only a minute fraction of the picture ... altho' I must say, given the above, it's a bit of a surprise that she did win it -esp. in 1923.)

A.

Ah yes, I have read many things that she had written, and I myself find her to be a good read.