Even when I wasn’t a fan of poetry I was a fan of Edna St. Vincent Millay. She suits a very particular taste. Her poetry is sometimes jagged, it doesn’t flow off the tongue, but it’s still beautiful in its cacophony if syllables. It’s always very honest too, sometimes brutally so. She never wrapped up her meaning in pretentious wanderings, and I think that she was very often calling out to other women. She paints such vivid imagery; she is great for a smile. Sometimes she makes you see the beauty in nature, and sometimes she evokes the beauty of sadness, either way if you enjoy her poetry you’ll want to hug the book to your chest at the end of each sonnet.

What should I be but just what I am?



A Few Figs from Thistles, the second collection I read by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) was the second collection of hers that was published (in 1920). As with the first collection I read by her, [b:Second April|2372763|Second April|Edna St. Vincent Millay|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348537503l/2372763._SX50_.jpg|2379671], I was mesmerized by her blending of the beauty of classic lyrical forms (sonnet, tercet, eulogy) with emotional self-expression in various moods and registers, swerving from feisty, vital and playful educing her freedom of mind to the more considerate, confessional stanza’s revealing heartbreak.

FIRST FIG

MY candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–
It gives a lovely light!

Gracefully musical in her rhythms and rhyming, the melodious writing energizes. The poems testify of a passionate lust for life of a young woman who wasn’t to hang her head acquiescing to the coercion of the gender roles of her time, as the cheerful rebelliousness in Daphne and The philosopher illustrates:

THE PHILOSOPHER

AND what are you that, missing you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,
As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
And looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man
And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
The one man in my mind?

Yet women's ways are witless ways,
As any sage will tell,–
And what am I, that I should love
So wisely and so well?

There is exuberance, there is laughter. Flippant and scoffing, witty and at times a little naughty in a childlike way, the free-spirited woman is entitled to be as inconstant in love like men:

THURSDAY

AND if I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday–
So much is true.

And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday,–yes–but what
Is that to me?

(Does this poem remind you of a certain pop song too?)

Thank you so much, dear Vesna, for sending me this delightful breeze of refreshing lyricism on a wonderfully sunny spring Sunday.

The collection can be read here.

I wasn't all that much of a fan honestly, and had to push myself through the second half of this one which surprised me. But I've been on a massive kick of reading poetry pieces since Sara's books last week. Maybe something more next week.

rereading it all week

I am most faithless when I most am true.

Some highlights for me :


“After all's said and after all's done,
  What should I be but a harlot and a nun?”



“To Kathleen

  Still must the poet as of old,
  In barren attic bleak and cold,
  Starve, freeze, and fashion verses to
  Such things as flowers and song and you;

  Still as of old his being give
  In Beauty's name, while she may live,
  Beauty that may not die as long
  As there are flowers and you and song.”

I like saucy poets from the 1920s. I feel like if Edna St. Vincent Millay was still around today, she’d be the old lady with the “I can’t believe I have to still protest this shit” sign. Brief, bright, and often biting.