Nancy Milford, Savage Beauty

Edna St Vincent Millay is my favorite poet. I can still remember reading a sonnet of hers in a friend's American literature textbook and immediately going out to buy her Collected Poems. Her poems resonate with me and I've never outgrown them - does anyone outgrow love, sex, longing, desire or death?

Nancy Milford's biography of Millay, Savage Beauty, is amazing. Norma Ellis (née Millay), Millay's sister and executor, allowed Milford complete access to all correspondence, notebooks, diaries and estate as well as shared her own memories of Millay and her family. Milford also interviewed surviving friends and persuaded them to share their letters with her. A large part of the book is original texts and remembrances from friends and Norma. Milford adds enough details and explanations to glue it all together coherently. Any indiscretions are treated with fairness and a respect for the poet but nothing obvious is held back, except for the three things Norma mentions she destroyed: an indiscreet letter returned to Millay, an ivory dildo which "Norma admitted was difficult to burn", and a set of pornographic photographs of Millay and her husband. The result is that I feel like I knew Edna St Vincent Millay from birth to death as an intimate friend would.

Millay was the poet of the Jazz Age, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. She is best know for her poem "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!

Her poetry is stunning and fearless, defiant and remorseless. A wicked wit runs through it, skewering herself, those she loved and those who loved her. It recognises the sadness in betrayal and death but never succumbs to sentimentality.

She was a New Woman, a bohemian in the 1920's and her life is even more interesting than her art. Millay was married. Her husband supported her in every endeavor she undertook, from writing to managing lovers including a longstanding affair with a younger man to an addiction to alcohol and morphine. It makes for fascinating reading and gave me a new perspective on her poetry.

I highly recommend this book if you are a fan. I would guess that Milford's biography of Zelda Fitzgerald is also excellent. And if you have never experienced Millay's poetry, have a look and maybe you will fall in love with her as I did.