Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

by Nancy Milford

Thomas Hardy once said that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. The most famous poet of the Jazz Age, Millay captivated the nation: She smoked in public, took many lovers (men and women, single and married), flouted convention sensationally, and became the embodiment of the New Woman.

Thirty years after her landmark biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, Nancy Milford returns with an iconic portrait of this passionate, fearless woman who obsessed America even as she tormented herself.

Chosen by USA Today as one of the top ten books of the year, Savage Beauty is a triumph in the art of biography. Millay was an American original--one of those rare characters, like Sylvia Plath and Ernest Hemingway, whose lives were even more dramatic than their art.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Poetry, Biography Memoir, History, Feminism, Womens

608 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Nancy Lee Winston Milford (March 26, 1938–March 29, 2022) was an American biographer.

Nancy Lee Winston was born in Dearborn, Michigan. She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1959, then earned an M.A. (1964) and a Ph.D. (1972) at Columbia University. Her dissertation was on Zelda Fitzgerald.

Milford is best known for her book Zelda, about F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda Fitzgerald. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, spent 29 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list, and has since been translated into 17 languages. --Wikipedia

Reviews

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

For your ears. You can thank me later.

I've decided that I like Edna St. Vincent Millay more as a person than as a poet. I feel bad about that, to a certain degree. Because how would I know about her if not first for her poetry? She gained popularity for her writing, and her personal life was secondary (sorta).

Nancy Milford does a great job here of researching Vincent's life, primarily through talking with Vincent's sister, Norma, who passed away in 1986. (One note of serious annoyance: Nowhere in the Acknowledgements does Milford thank Norma, or the memory of Norma, or make any reference whatsoever to Norma. I'm a bit disgusted by that. Milford likely wouldn't have gotten nearly as much personal information if it had not been for Norma. Jeebus.) There were two large segments of b/w photos from Vincent's life - some from her years at Vassar, some with her sisters, later with one or two or three lovers, later still with her husband, outside their home, Steepletop, and even later, looking rather sickly (as she was). The photos help bring Milford's writing to life, and I enjoyed flipping through the photos as they came up in Milford's biography.

Vincent's life was clearly lived to her fullest. She had no qualms with falling in love/lust/bed with whomever showed her the slightest bit of attention. These experiences are also detailed in Daniel Epstein's What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, but are also written about in great detail in Milford's biography.

Here's the main thing I've learned about Vincent - she was a dependent and co-dependent person. She was (from what I can tell) never actually alone. From the time her father left and she had to take care of her mother and two younger sisters, to her studies at Vassar where she experiences for the first time the lubbins of another woman, to her later years with her husband and a line of various men. I think she actually lived and thrived because of the attentions lavished on her by just about everyone. Normally I would hate this about her, but while I'm not thrilled about it, it sort of contributes to what I find so interesting about her.

She's often compared to a modern Lord Byron, that whole "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" thing (which also defines Dylan McKay in Beverly Hills, 90210). She wasn't heartless, though. She genuinely loved everyone she was with, but often made poor choices; she was entirely too self-centered and concerned only with making herself happy. Train wreck, that's what Millay was, a freaking train wreck and I love every minute of learning about her life.

Not quite sure what this says about me. But maybe someone can write a biography of me and delve into that issue.

She was a lovely woman, and for most of her years, she was a hard worker, something I will always appreciate and respect. She wrote more than just poetry, so she wasn't just a one-trick pony. But I think her life got in her way in more ways than one, and she probably could have been even more. We'll never know, but that's my impression.

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edna St. Vincent Millay was America’s greatest lyric poet. She was the poetic voice of a generation in the 1920s. She wrote sonnets with a mastery unmatched since Shakespeare. During the ‘20s and ‘30s she enjoyed a celebrity that later generations would call rock star famous. Yet she has largely disappeared from the popular imagination, and her work is rarely championed or taught in academia. She is not forgotten, exactly, but her circle of admirers is far smaller than the tremendous scale of her talent would justify.

Savage Beauty, Nancy Milford’s biography of Millay, is a bulwark against that creeping cultural forgetfulness. At over 600 pages, it thoroughly chronicles the poet’s life and work, maintaining interest throughout because of the fascinating nature of its subject. For Millay’s life story is every bit as captivating as is her gorgeous poetry.

Millay lived a life as fascinating as the best fiction. Raised in poverty, she gained critical acclaim at the age of 20 after entering a poem into a poetry competition. Doors opened because of her talent, and a wealthy patron enabled her to attend Vassar. From Vassar she moved to Greenwich Village during the height of its bohemian golden age, meeting and rubbing elbows with the likes of Eugene O’Neill, Emma Goldman, Floyd Dell, and Jack Reed. She became the exemplar of the New Woman - intellectually vibrant and aggressively independent, fearlessly championing equal rights and free love. Her early volumes of poetry established her as the most celebrated poet of the Jazz Age while still in her twenties.

Milford’s book captures the whirlwind of Millay’s youth, and moves on to reveal the maturing poet. Her activism, her affairs, and her continued literary triumphs, her marriage, her complicated family, her addictions and her decline - an entire life, romantic and tragic and absolutely fascinating revealed in its pages.

There are other books about Millay that are certainly worth reading, notably Daniel Epstein’s What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems Of Edna St. Vincent Millay. But for an exhaustive, full capturing of Millay’s life and work, Milford’s excellent biography is a must read.

[Brekke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm biased because Edna St. Vincent Millay is my absolute favorite poet. So learning more about her was very interesting to me.

The book itself is incredibly well researched, really delving into the wild life of this amazing women.

She's not really someone you can idolize or look up to, but she is someone you can fall in love with, and that shines through beautifully in this biography.

I will warn that it is a bit heavy, and getting through the entire thing does involve a little slogging, but for someone truly interested in the subject matter it is 100% worth it.

[Rosemary Lerit Titievsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one long book and I wanted more. Not more pages. More poetry. And way more salaciousness. Alas, Nancy Milford is a patient professional who carefully presents well-documented facts with little innuendo.

The story of Edna is beyond fascinating. This sort-of homely girl from Maine uses her mind and ability to pierce through people's facades to seduce her way through life. But there's so much more to the story. She works hard and deserves her successes. She loves to be loved, cares to be cared for. She can never escape the ingrained fear of destitution and abandonment suffered throughout her childhood. But she also never seems to let go of the wild passion that fills a certain set of intelligent young children. Through her poetry, we see how she eventually tames this sharp pastoral ardor into sometimes subtly bold plays and poems and other writings that touch upon the here and now of her time.

And then there is her mother, her sisters, her friendships, her dalliances, her addictions, sadness, her savage fiery-red beauty.

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read a lot of biographies of writers, but this year I read two, and I think I've figured out what the biggest challenge is in documenting the life of a creative person: Most of them don't leave behind much writing about their creative process. As a result, any biography of a writer is going to focus on what can be documented—their various relationships, their travels, the awards they've won, bad behavior that others witnessed and never forgot. This is all well and good—after all, I think most people who read biographies are looking for this sort of detail about the subject's life, and, when it comes to creative process, are content to let the work speak for itself. The problem that arises, though, is that the subject can become divorced from her creative output to such an extent that when she's quoted saying something that displays her intellect and her sheer focus on her work, it's almost jarring—you suddenly remember that Millay, for example, isn't just a woman with lots of lovers and an active social life, she's also a poet. In this particular case, I think Nancy Milford also just didn't entirely understand Millay, and as a result is not able to integrate her more, shall we say, impetuous side with the obviously disciplined mind that created all those popular and praised works. The other problem with biography is that when the subject has self-destructive tendencies—as a fair amount of creative types do, unfortunately—the whole thing just tends to end very badly, devastatingly even. I kind of wish I didn't know some of the things I now know about Edna St. Vincent Millay.

But I still wouldn't discourage anyone from reading this! This book was a massive undertaking, but it's very well put together and doesn't feel unwieldy at all. Some Goodreads reviewers have complained that this is boring or not lascivious enough, but I disagree on both counts. This is a long book, but fascinating, entertaining, and full of information. The actual conversations Milford was able to have with Edna's sister Norma add a unique perspective that no other portrait of Millay will ever achieve. I'm sure others will try to document Millay's life, but this book will be difficult, if not impossible, to surpass.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a riveting biography of a remarkable literary and feminist icon. It took Nancy Milford 30 years to write this biography of "Vincent" - and after you read it, you can understand why. Milford remains remarkably true to her sources - a vast treasure trove of at-that-point-unseen letters, journals, notebooks, unfinished works, and more from Edna St. Vincent Millay's estate. In the book, she lets the sources stretch their legs and breathe, allowing us readers to stew in Vincent's rich, impeccable writing. We get to read full letters, full ten-page poems. We are transported into the thick of her sumptuous drama-laden life. Yet Milford allows Vincent's literary triumphs, her frank eroticism, her late-in-life petulance, addiction, and downward spiral to unfold quietly, without a hint of sensationalism. Above all, this book feels honest.

But It seems to me that Milford made a conscious methodological decision with this biog, one I ultimately lamented. Savage Beauty almost reads in real-time; that is, she revels in the details of Vincent's fantastic life in a way that makes you feel like you are watching it via hidden camera. Yet Milford does little in the way of contextualization.

As a historian, I walked away wondering why Milford failed to situate Vincent's life in the history of feminism during this time, changing sexual ideals and possibilities for American women, the history of New York's bohemia ... I could go on and on about the themes that could have been addressed here. Vincent's life seemed a perfect entry point onto these fascinating processes, but Milford declined to allow it to be so.

As someone who knows significantly less about poetry than I do about history, I longed for some analysis of Vincent's work ... Vincent's poems seemed so old fashioned during a time of striking experimentation with modernist forms. Wasn't she a throwback? Was she just a celebrity or was she truly deserving of the heaps of praise she received throughout her life?

Milford offers little in the way of judgment of Vincent, her poetry, and her life. While I think this was purposeful, and on some level admirable, it seemed as if she passed up a rare opportunity to explain the way that the early 20th century influenced Vincent, and vice versa.

[Lene · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is far too long for the subject matter at hand. I could certainly have stood 100 fewer pages of ESVM's whining. In hindsight, it was a poor choice for my first biography. It has left a horrible taste in my mouth for the entire genre.
I found the author's insertion of herself into the story irritating. The flow (or lack thereof) was not well served by the constant excerpts from letters to and from Millay. I realize that these are the documents upon which the biography is founded, but they became disruptive and distracting.
While I enjoyed Milford's treatment of the early life of this poet, by the time Edna was living in Greeenwich village, I had had enough of her.
It was a real chore to get through the middle third of this book. I kept expecting something more from this woman who grew up in abject poverty. I wanted her to be stronger; to have developed a character and a will that could withstand life's turmoil. I was left instead with the impression of a childish, insecure, munchausen case who barely had the will to get out of bed in the morning.
I began this book with a great deal of enthusiasm and anticipation. I remembered how much I enjoyed Millay's poetry as a teenager. She had been an inspiration. After reading this biography, I feel pity for her. I am underwhelmed by both the writing in this biography, and the person about whom it was written.

[Leanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will admit that I didn't know of Edna St. Vincent Millay before starting on this book and so I greatly enjoyed the introduction to her poetry - certain poems are excerpted at length in this book and I found them to be lovely and insightful. Moreover, the portrait of Edna and her entire family was detailed, layered and complex. In fact, the entire description of Edna's life called out for psychological interpretation at nearly every turn. Although I never felt that I really liked any of the characters, I found them to be realistic and fascinating as well as products of their particularly interesting time period.

My only critique of this book is that I thought the author was often too present in the book - she appears as a character and her own interpretations of the personalities are repeatedly reiterated throughout the book. Despite the, at times, heavy-handed writing, this was a compelling biography of a fascinating woman.

[Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable biography, for a multitude of reasons.

First, I must admit my own ignorance when it comes to much of Millay's work. I think I was surprised by how well-known she was in her day. I took advanced English courses in high school, studied English quite a bit in college, and yet my knowledge of her was so very limited, and the same went for my English nerd friends who I brought her up to. This either reflects poorly on the school systems, the way that fame of women is regarded, the way that poetry is regarded, or all three.

As with so many people who show promise so young - when she wrote her first acclaimed poem she was but a teenager - she was quickly thrust under the spotlight and cherished each moment it was on her. She led a very dramatic and alluring life, and as usually goes, it ended sadly and more quickly than it should've.

I've read some reviews complaining about how much the book focuses on her lovers, but I think each is very telling about Millay, particularly Ferdinand Earle, Arthur Ficke, Edmund Wilson and, of course, Eugen Boissevain. I was actually most interested in her relationship with Boissevain, as a result of the portrayal of her love life. It seemed like no one would ever be able to make her commit in anyway, so you grew curious about what it was that Boissevain had/did that the others didn't. I ended up breezing through reading about the "juicy" parts out of curiosity for what it was that thrust her into domestic life.

What he did was mother her - which made sense, considering Millay's relationship with her mother. Millay had an incredibly close - and odd - relationship with her mother, and it seemed as though there was no other woman that Millay was ever so close to, including her sisters, both of whom she also had very strange relationships with.

Getting back to Boissevain, their relationship was incredibly fascinating. For example, while Millay was addicted to morphine, Boissevain began taking the drug, as well, so that he could understand what she was going through. When she quit, he quit. When he was dealing with his lung cancer and had difficulties breathing, she mimicked this, trying to understand his pain. If that's not love, I don't know what is.

I do agree with the people who wanted more poetry in the book - but the book is so good, if you don't own any of her poetry, you won't have any problem in going out and buying one. Milford does do a good job of illuminating Millay's creative process, though, and I think that's more important in the context of this biography.

I found all too many similarities between myself and Millay, which made it an interesting read, but I think any young, ambitious writer will see a bit of themselves in her... which is probably why my Grandmother had the smarts to give it to me.

All in all, a fascinating read, even for someone who was rather unfamiliar with Millay's work. I have a strong appreciation for who she is, and I think this was a nice introduction. Like any long non-fiction book, it can take quite a bit of time to read through, and it has its sluggish moments - I'm a fast reader and it took me about a month and a half - but it's worth reading, all the same.

Note: I'm still thinking about this, even weeks later, so it gets bumped up to five stars.

[Smallen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book made me hate Edna St. Vincent Millay. No joke. I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for some of her verses especially some from Conversations at Midnight, but she seems an awful, ugly, nasty person.

That aside, I wasn't really a tremendous fan of the book. I loved Milford's biography of Zelda Fitzgerald and expected a lot from the follow up that took 30 years to research and write. It was too choppy for me. There were so many letters and excerpts from letters that I never felt like I was reading a story at all. I was underwhelmed.

I should probably note that I read this book in like 3-5 page increments over a 6-7 month period. Maybe if I'd read it all the way through I'd have gotten used to the choppiness.

[Simon Robs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Savage beauty indeed, title lifted from last lines in [her] lover's' poem not her hubby 'cause they were open when marriages weren't, and Vincent was a cad almost from reverse angle, but her vicious appetites lingered about who could tame them. Ms. Milford fairly hits it again HER subject like "Zelda" two ladies swinging hammers amongst the men hitting nails on head that broke down walls of resistance to women yarns & heft.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a splendid research work made by Nancy Milford in describing the life and work of this remarkable poetess.

Through her letters and the correspondence between Edna Millay (she signed her letters as Vincent) and her family and her friends (Edmund Wilson,George Dillon - they translated Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal") we can follow her brilliant career and how she met some remarkable writers and poets.

Millay was the first woman ever to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Some of Millay's works published until 1923 are now released to the public domain and will be published by Project Gutenberg. Don't miss them!

[Dorianne Laux · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far, amazing.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review: Savage Beauty written by Nancy Milford
I began this book not having the slightest idea about Edna St. Vincent Millay other than a few poems of hers I remembered from a poetry collection, and came away from it enthralled as much with the story as I was with the care Nancy Milford took in every detail, every analysis, every description. A biography has twin hearts: the first being the story, the life itself, and the second being the biographers interpretations- of not only the happenings, but the particulars of a life in photos, cards, lines tossed onto paper, diary entries, ticket stubs, oftentimes going as far back as early childhood. It would be a blessing for any person to have Milford as caretaker of their legacy, as she takes these particulars and views them in complete context of the life and person they document, then reflecting on their meaning or truth with the light touch and piercing insight of a revered Aunt. She never scolds or allows herself to be entirely swept up into the awe beckoning when viewing the personals of a major literary figure from the past.

Milford approached Norma Millay, the surviving relative of ESVM, and eventually, with much persistence and patience, persuaded her to help Milford write the life story of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Milford had the conviction, borne of an instinctual feel for how people work, that Norma would have papers and records of her sister, never revealed. And she did. The diaries and extensive collection of letters from throughout ESVM's life, letters exchanged with lovers, friends, family and her husband, provided the foundation for this amazing biography. Intermingled with the telling of ESVM are stops in the story where we are brought back to present time, with Norma and Nancy Milford talking. Norma's sharp personality and fierce devotion to her sister bring the entire story headlong into significance, for even if we were to deny or miss the significance of the story for ourselves or our times, we cannot dismiss the meaning and relevance for this sister. The meeting of historical significance with personal seals the depth of the story.

Edna St. Vincent Millay- known as Vincent to friends and family- was born at the tail end of the 1800's and grew up primarily with her two sisters, Norma and Kathleen, ( Kathleen having a small side story throughout, as the sister who wrote and published but resented her lack of status next to her more famous sibling, eventually dying of alcoholism after fierce descent including hospitalization, divorce and financial ruin )and her mother, Cora. The story begins by poking the ashes of the family history, which is quite interesting enough to hold up on it's own, and involved the outrageous affair of Cora's mother and her eventual death, thrown from a horse. Cora eventually marries and leaves her own husband, taking care of her three girls, or as she called them, ' little women ', for they were to bear the brunt of their own caretaking as their mother traveled for long periods of time, working as a nurse to provide for her daughters. Vincent's father had moved away and had no contact with the family outside of a few letters to Vincent.

Vincent's childhood was marked by a few pointed circumstances: her father had left, her mother was often gone, the family had no money and therefore no status and little respect.
Left alone to housekeep, school and socialize, the Millay girls no doubt all developed their own coping mechanisms. Vincent daydreamed and wrote. Her diary became her confidant and her daydreams involved the typical savior prince. Through the cheerful letters back and forth from mother to daughters, we hear the ' chin up ' attitude they all tried to maintain, but this unnatural separation took its toll. Vincent was prone to small rages, rages private and perhaps totally so because of the family's lack of money and competitive socializing, but extremely important in view of Vincent's life as a whole.

There is the story recounted by Norma of Vincent stuffing her sister's mouth with geranium leaves, pushing her underneath a pillow and sitting triumphantly on top. The detail of ' geranium leaves ' at first makes the story very amusing, but as we read we realize that the undercurrents provoking Vincent were not light. It was a fierce lonliness for her mother and resentment at the responsibilities thrust on a girl who wrote:

' I'm getting old and ugly. My hands are stiff and rough and stained and blistered. I can feel my face dragging down. I can feel the lines coming underneath my skin. They don't show yet but I can feel a hundred of them underneath. I love beauty more than anything else in the world and I can't take the time to be pretty. Crawl into bed at night too tired to brush my hair... '

Millay's literary story takes it's place in history when she almost takes first prize in a major poetry contest with her poem 'Renaissance'. By the time the contest was over and poems published, Vincent had a written relationship with Mr. Earle (an important editor ), secured herself a fully paid scholarship to Vassar College and received the attention of many in the poetic world who believed that Millay's story should have taken first place.

Millay attends and graduates Vassar, and it is here in this setting that we see her personality as it was to remain for many years- seductive, freewheeling, intellectually stimulating and stimulated and uncommonly confident in her poetic ability. She had affairs with men and women, drew people to her red haired, keen eyed and potently spirited beauty, upset Vassar faculty, did passably at school and at the end of her four years published her first book of poetry, ' Renascence and Other Poems '. ( The spelling discrepancy is discussed in the book. )

From here, Vincent Millay took off to the skies, shining brighter and brighter in the world, fiercer and more admired, called ' a genius ' by almost everyone who met her and most who read her, widely published and respected, eventually called ' America's girl poet '. She was beguiling completely, utterly charming, much beloved by men and women, and married to Eugen Boissevain, a handsome, tall and intelligent man from European money. They would both have affairs and spend, at times, years apart, but they always remained married and in the end of their lives were for each other, only. Eugen was, from the beginning, completely sure of Vincent Millay's genius and took it on himself to be her ' almost perfect husband ' as the caption under his picture reads in the book. He supported her and coddled her, but exactly how Vincent treated him on a day to day basis remains a bit of a mystery to me, not through any lack of Milford's, but because the focus in their life was so primarily on Vincent and her writing that little was spoken of how she treated Eugen outside of expecting him to support her writing completely, including taking on most of the household duties and putting up with an extended and serious love affair she had with a poet.

The brightest burn in this lifeline is during this ' Jazz Age ' where Millay mingled, played and loved with many of the most prominent writers, editors, publishers and poets of that time. She was the first woman to win the Pultizer Prize in 1923, for the poem ' The Harp Weaver '. Millay was very productive, publishing books of poetry, writing abroad for Vanity Fair, completing essays, fighting for politics she believed in, ( highly unusual for a woman ) all the while helping support her family. Again, the details of Milford's research are entwined with her gentle but pointed observations, making this already interesting time in history even more fascinating for it's revolutions around this extraordinary woman.

Millay's life winds tighter and at an increasingly melancholy note from this point on. I found the ending very difficult to read. Millay and her husband settle into their beautiful home ' Steepletop ' and there is much heartbreak, estrangement, an evocative feel that Milford creates reminding me of an old person wandering, and the harrowing descent of Vincent into drug abuse. Her medical condition or conditions remain a mystery. Milford guesses at the truth, but is not as assured here as other places in the story. Reading what documented evidence there is, I was myself persuaded that Millay had two afflictions: physical and spiritual, both which contributed to her addiction. Millay was afraid of getting old, as we all are to some degree, but for her I believe it was the snuffing of a candle that had been her main source of light for her entire adulthood. She herself sobs to a friend at one point that she cannot write, is not beautiful, no one wants her anymore, and is much cheered up when he assures her this is not true.

The pictures twice enclosed in the middle of this large book are fantastic; I referred to them over and over reading the biography, wondering at the details they revealed. Milford closes the picture section with a picture of Norma Millay in her later years, reclining against a fence, cigarette in hand, looking entirely iconoclastic and defiant as well as slightly mischevious. She seems a fascinating character in her own right.

Again, it is Milford's amazing persistence, psychological compassions and tender touch that illuminate this life completely. Savage Beauty reveals not only the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay but the intelligence and talent of it's biographer.

Highly recommended.

' 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!'

--- Edna St. Vincent Millay

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve read two other books that dive this obsessively into someone’s life, one on Churchill and Gandhi, and one on John Adams (I’m actually still working my way through that one). All I can really say about books that are this-level-obsessive about the day to day of a human’s life is that someone, somewhere probably cares, but I really can’t imagine who.

I made it as far as page 184 out of 509 (of text), which is 36% of the way through. If an author can’t draw me in by then (and it was a book club book, which I always have extra incentive to finish, even if I don’t particularly enjoy), then it is, to me, a lost cause. There was a huge section (maybe a chapter?) about Millay’s first truly widely lauded poem. The chapter gave her reading a couple of stanzas and talked about her thoughts on writing it and pages upon pages of her relationship with the editor of the contest that brought it to the public’s attention. The problem? I’d never heard of it or read it. I had ZERO context for the poem. When the book talked about her struggles to decide whether to use this image or that wording, it was meaningless, as I had never read the poem. Unknown to me, the entire poem was included at the end of the chapter. A simple parenthetical phrase at the beginning of the chapter to reference that would have given the entire section context that would have made it feel relevant to read, instead of leaving me feeling like an outsider who this book was not meant for.

And then there is the ridiculous level of detail. I can’t even…. Most of the third of the book that I read tells what Millay did literally week by week. This week she wrote a letter that said X. The next week she wrote a letter that said Y. For the next two weeks, she didn’t write a letter, then she wrote three the following week to these people and they said A, B, and C. Dear God, who cares?

There are probably people who are well-versed in Millay’s life who will be fascinated by the fine details of every minute of her youth. Sadly, it is probably her adulthood that was worth reading about, and I couldn’t drag myself even to the halfway point to find out why she is so noteworthy.

[Ned Ryerson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just started this, but so far so good. Millay was a very "out there" character for her time. She was promiscuous and not choosy about which sex she slept with. She smoked and drank and partied. She was politically vocal and active. She hated the Lindberghs and publicly spoke out against them when they were advocating the Nazis. People adored her, but also hated and feared her. Thomas Hardy once said that there were only two good things about America--the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St Vincent Millay. This book was written with the help of her sister who allowed the author to view letters and writings and photos that no one else had ever been privy to.

There are a couple of Millay's poems that speak to me in big ways. I'm not usually a fan of sonnets, but, man, does she write some beautiful, bittersweet ones.

Here is the one that prompted me to pick up this book:

Time Does Not Bring Relief

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
who told me that time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him in the shrinking of the tide;
the old snows melt from every mountainside;
and last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
heaped in my heart, and old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
to go--so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
where never fell his boot or shone his face
I say "There is no memory of him here."
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

Good stuff.

[Robert Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this book and it broke my heart. Three sisters. All so clearly close. And what talent this poet had. The third woman to win the Pulitzer for Poetry. And it also rather bothers me that so few people even know her name among my contemporaries. Read this biography, please!

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my second read, and I loved it just as much as the first time.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been reading the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay lately, so I was pleased to find this book in one of the boxes that my aunt sent at the beginning of the winter. I knew very little about the poet and her life, so this biography, thirty years in the writing, makes me want to take a new look at the poems. Although I feel that there are some faults in Milford's biography, seeing the poetry against the background of a life, often troubled but always adventurous, added a new dimension to my understanding.

Millay spoke for a new generation of women, those of the Jazz Age that were stepping across boundaries and breaking into new territory. Millay smoked in public and made no secret of her many lovers, both male and female. Marriage vows, her own or another's, had little effect on her behavior. Her troubled life began in Maine, where her father abandoned the family early and her mother felt obliged to leave her three small daughters alone for long periods of time while working as a nurse. The relationship between the four women affected much of "Vincent's" life, with turmoil between herself and a difficult younger sister who felt overshadowed by Vincent's talent. Cora Buzzell Millay, Vincent's mother, seems to struggle with pride and jealousy in Milford's portrayal of her, and it sometimes seems that Vincent and her sisters go to great lengths to pacify Cora's demands, perhaps from fear of abandonment. There is a hint at one point that Vincent may have been molested by a man Cora was involved with.

What struck me most about Vincent Millay's life is that genius so often comes out of such a life. Talented people often seem to be driven toward a need for experience, and the depth of their work reveals an understanding of experience that so many of us lack. We need these people to speak for us, out of their pain, to say what we cannot find words to reveal.

Milford disappoints me occasionally throughout her work. She isn't a particularly organized writer; the book is unsettling in the manner that the material is presented, sometimes in an almost haphazard fashion. It is difficult to capture a life, of course, but the best biographers understand the "why" behind the "what happened" and these reasons elude Milford. Reading between the lines of the numerous excerpts of Millay's works, journals and letters is up to the reader, and Milford offers no interpretation or analysis. I felt sometimes that Milford was overwhelmed with the material, and perhaps intimidated by Millay's sister, Norma.

Savage Beauty has some flaws, but so did Edna St. Vincent Millay. The biography is well worth reading for the facts presented and the excerpts from Millay's journals and less accessible writing beyond her poetry. The biography has encouraged me to go back to the poems, with a better understanding of their author, and maybe this is accomplishment enough.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few thoughts as I continue to reflect on this book and ESVM.

There was so little social/historical context until ESVM marched in protest for Sacco and Vanzetti- so little sense that the poet was aware of and engaged in a world beyond what gave her immediate pleasure. Little mention of WWI, the flu (except for ESVM's ode to a lost college mate), the women's suffrage movement- I felt a little lost in trying to place the poet's open sexuality, her college and young adult affairs in relation to what was happening in society at the time- or at least the society in which she operated.

The same could be said for the behavior of her mother and grandmother- the courage it must have taken to walk away from marriages at the turn of the century and earlier.

I found the style of speaking- in correspondence between ESVM and her sisters, mother, lovers, friends, so bizarre, cloying, slightly deranged. Was this typical of the era, of people in these social strata (ESVM straddled high and low society)? Her poetry seems so old-fashioned for her time- 19th century wind swirling through dark English moors kind of stuff. I know very little of poetry, so would perhaps benefit from an analysis of ESVM works.

Yet, after reading this bio, I have little desire to explore her poetry. If Milford's portrayal is an accurate one, the poet is a creature I find repulsive- so needy, manipulative, little deserving of sympathy. What is fascinating is her obvious charisma- the wand of charm she wielded was so powerful that everyone swooned in her presence, with little to show but heartbreak and strangely-written letters.
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It's difficult to assign this stars- I thought it was very well-written, but didn't care a whit for EsVM- who was mostly a self-absorbed, nasty, ill, manipulative wench. But I need to think about it all for a bit.
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PCC-Chicks Book club read for March.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought "God, when will I ever finish this book? Why am I so committed to it?" I think because, in the nick of time, the morphine addiction started, which is always titillating. Then of course I had to plug through the awful boring part of any addiction. :/ Spoiler alert: she dies. Everyone dies, and the narrative of their life is over.

I liked the parts where she was a hot popular talented lesbian, and then when every man fell in love with her, and when later she was in fully poly relationships with gorgeous pouty younger men and her husband was amazing and supportive. Gives me hope! I'm sick of being the pouty younger man, but I sure would love a partner who took care of everything so I could just write and seduce. A girl can dream...

[Carmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exquisitely rendered biography of a complex and talented American icon.

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic writing, but I am very glad to be finished with the life of this exhausting, sad, frustrating poet.

[charlotte]

HEAVILY skimmed for a project but it deserves a place on here because skimming a 600 page book in 2 days was not easy lol. have to say i’m absolutely shocked millay’s star has faded so much based on how famous she was in her time. the 20s were so much more modern than i expected and her life was honestly crazy. i found the biographer’s approach to be wildly confusing though, she left so much vagueness and her style of narrative bounced around so much and didn’t really seem to have a thread running through it. i was skimming just for stuff about her personality and who she was as a person and found all of that to be completely hidden and randomly placed. i had wished the biographer had placed a lot more of her opinion in for my own purposes but also because it’s just really hard to know what was normal for the time and what was actually striking and different about her.

edna really knew how to live and love and i’ll always admire her. the honestly and relatability of her poetry does really seem to reflect the person she once was. this definitely cemented my love for her that i’ve always had and the last third of her life is so sad and just proof that the woman loved being alive, and getting old and being disabled completely stole her spark.

[tortoise dreams · Rating 4 out of 5]

A biographer's success comes from enabling the reader to know the subject, to see them as a person, to understand their motivations, feel their challenges, appreciate why they made the choices they did. Beyond a simple recitation of facts and accomplishments -- and the young Millay was easily as accomplished as the young Plath -- Nancy Milford is successful in helping us perceive the Edna St. Vincent Millay behind the legend of "my candle burns at both ends ... ."

[aris · Rating 5 out of 5]

i think my favourite part of this book was the allusion that millay owned (& used) an ivory dildo

[Alex Sarll]

A biography of the trailblazing poet, laureate of the good twenties*. At once magisterial and deeply personal, it was thirty years in the making, meaning that Milford was able to speak directly to the last survivors among Millay's Jazz Age peers, not least her sister Norma. Who was custodian of the legacy, and had herself for a long time planned to write Edna's biography, making her an active presence here, almost a framing device, as she distracts Milford from asking about Edna's sapphic dalliances by flirting with her herself ("People used to say that I did what Vincent Millay wrote about"), or goes full 'Don't tell him, Pike' when she tells the biographer all about the things she destroyed lest they sully the memory (the ivory dildo, the explicit pictures). This confers a stamp of authenticity in a sense, apostolic succession – but also, in its pulling back of the curtain, a certain Janet Malcolm exposure of the genre's strings. None of which stops it being immensely, propulsively readable; if I sometimes found myself flicking back a few pages to remind myself who some new player was, it's no failing of Milford's introductions, just representative of how bright Edna burned, eclipsing all around her. Even at this distance you can tell she was a mesmerising figure, a pre-Raphaelite siren yet poet not muse. Milford does sometimes write of her subject as if besotted – and most people were, male or female (perhaps the most remarkable of the witnesses she meets is a woman who turned Vincent down after a reading at Bryn Mawr, which seems to have been quite the rarity). Of the descriptions Milford quotes or conjures, the one which best summed it up for me was Edmund Wilson's: "She was one of those women whose features are not perfect and who in their moments of dimness may not seem even pretty, but who, excited by the blood or the spirit, become almost supernaturally beautiful." But Milford can still find the distance to interrogate how this affected Millay, forever being described as sprite, elf, girl poet, child well into middle age, as the reviews of her work got more mixed, either tying her to her youthful success, or lamenting the changes. Not uncommon for anyone who hits big when young, of course, but often that little bit more constricting for women. Not that Millay seemed all that tied to her gender, especially early on; some of her first publications were by editors who assumed 'E. Vincent Millay' was male, and she seldom hurried to correct them. And much like the Brontes, she and her two sisters had their male alter egos and pet names, though unlike them the mother, Cora, also lived long enough to play a part in what sometimes feels like an Angela Carter fairytale riff even before its almost unbelievable end, with Norma and Edna singing lullabies to their mother's corpse as a grave is slowly dynamited out of the granite. Cora was already the second generation of women who'd left husbands, not such a common thing back then; she was possessive in some ways, yet also very liberal so long as she wasn't excluded – well, at least until one particularly dreadful suitor of Vincent's, the odious Daubigny, brings out a remarkable flood of Freudian invective, in which the boundaries of three generations seem to collapse in the face of the primal outpouring. Still, for the most part her attitude was summed up by a quote which, again, Norma had suppressed only for Milford to immortalise it, Cora telling Wilson she "had been a slut herself so why shouldn't her girls be".

Cora was herself a poet, meaning a thread of competition runs through the relationship, as too with the sisters, both of whom would take at least some share of Vincent's cast-offs, whether a kiss, a marriage, or something in between. Eventually the youngest, Kathleen, would become a thorough problem, sponging off Edna even while insisting that in some ill-defined sense she was the real talent and Edna had ripped her off. But this is in the later years, by which point everything is turning sour. Edna's health issues had been long-standing, but after a car accident it gets worse, culminating in what sounds like a truly miserable quality of life for most of her forties, enough to make one wonder in places whether sometimes even a short life might have been too long. She spent these years miserable, suffering, addicted to various drugs; even her work had become WWII agitprop, in direct defiance of her own insistence not so very long before that however righteous a cause might be, nevertheless "the business of a person who wishes to make a poem about this situation is primarily to write poetry" – which she insisted was not at all the same thing as being a reporter, agitator or reformer. Not that she hadn't been happy to be those things too, something Milford suggests might owe a little to the family background in Newburyport, Mass., with its history of reform, religious revival, abolitionism and women's associations. When the controversial publication The Masses was, disgracefully, tried for sedition during the Great War by an America which seemed to have forgotten its own First Amendment – not to mention double jeopardy – Millay was there to support it (OK, and dally with one of the defendants). When Sacco and Vanzetti were stitched up, she was out protesting. But for all that, and being emphatically a 'premature anti-fascist', her personal life – and the influence it had on her more personal poetry – was surely more revolutionary. A harbinger of the flappers, the New Woman or whatever any given fascinated/outraged commentator wished to call them, she smoked in public when it was illegal, romanced all and sundry, wrote poems celebrating impermanent affections – and was the first woman to win the Pulitzer for poetry. She romances so many big names that when John Carter pops up (they travel together to Albania, newly open and borders unfixed, where she's captured looking very like Byron), I wouldn't have been that surprised if he had been Of Mars. But long before that, at Vassar, she's living up to every girls' school cliche, not to mention sitting with her legs over the arm of the chair like the OG bi icon she is. There through the grace of a benefactor, who makes occasional doomed efforts to keep her on the straight and narrow, she had already decided that "No man could ever fill my life to the exclusion of other things" – then a radical sentiment, now commonplace, at least as far as the poetry or other career goes, though many (unlike Vincent) would still let it preclude affairs. "Although I have been faithful to you – in my fashion. (Not that you have desired my faithfulness; or that faithfulness is in any way a virtue – It is oftener a stupidity, I think.)" A heartbreaker whenever she feels tied down, but also frequently heartbroken, there is a sense (and at times this clearly exasperates Milford too) that Vincent needed the drama as much as the relationships themselves; I was already thinking that she probably wouldn't have settled happily to modern poly either, and then she expresses her disdain for Shelley's Epipsychidion, for my money still the best love poem to multiple people. At one stage an alumni association for her many admirers was proposed, and for a time there was a pattern of men bonding over their shared love for her; a charming notion, but she seemed to have had distinctly mixed feelings over their not falling out. And dear heavens, if one thinks of modern (or at any rate pre-Event) nonmonogamy as exhausting, how much more so back before instant communication, when letters could take weeks to cross in mid-Atlantic and even telegrams could be delayed and garbled. She does marry eventually, to Eugen Boissevain, a relationship where it's hard to get a handle on to what extent it was supportive, stifling, co-dependent...or whether, of course, those are really even discrete attributes.

Always, though, it comes back to those remarkable poems, which thanks to Milford's indefinable interactions with Norma, she can quote at length, often comparing them with early and even unpublished versions. Apparently Vincent's first encounter with poetry was Shakespeare, but specifically the passage about Death keeping Juliet as his paramour, which she described as having an almost physical impact on her, and it's not hard to see that rippling forward through her life and her work, the way love and death and the death of love and the love of death intertwine throughout it – not least in her most famous lines, the generation-defining 'My candle burns at both ends...' I was most surprised to learn that she didn't at all rate Swinburne, who would have seemed an obvious kindred spirit - nothing "but sound", said Edna, who much preferred Housman and Tennyson. How perfect, though, that in the pageant for Vassar's 50th anniversary she should have been cast as Marie de France, one pioneering poetess playing another.

If I haven't already made it sufficiently clear, this is the sort of biography I love, one which gives you a real sense of the subject, while also being recognisable as a feat of artistry by the writer. Yes, it has occasional gaps – the summer Vincent spends away from her family in her teens, on the back of a prize for her writing, elapses between chapters when surely that's the sort of thing to make a big impression? But no biography, not even those ones composed of multiple doorstop volumes, can contain the whole life unless it takes as long as the life to read it (and in some ways Milford herself skirted that, taking more than half Vincent's span to capture her). For a relatively punchy 500 pages, this one certainly gives the feel of coming close.

*Reading the book here in the shit twenties, it's shocking how the pandemic which preceded theirs, so much more deadly than COVID, only gets mentioned twice, both times regarding a mate from school whose flu death inspired some of Millay's poems. No 15 months with human contact forbidden for Vincent, and how much drearier a story it would have been if there were.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stop right there. Save yourself some time and watch --> this instead.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Milford was lucky to get access to the sister of Edna St Vincent Millay. She hung on to Edna's letters to write a book some day but never got around to it. She gave up and gave the material to Milford. The sister did destroy some sexually explicit material, I guess to protect Edna. Personally I wish she just let everything go: the truth is the truth. Adults should be able to handle such material. Milford calls Edna a modern day Byron, personality was part of her appeal.

Here's my favorite love poem/sonnet of all time by Millay:

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Here's another great love sonnet by Millay:

I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And oaths were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,—
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

Here's a third sonnet by Millay. It is one of her first great ones, written after an affair with a married man ended:

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 the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor 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 ever turn.

And here's a fourth:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

The book itself is thoroughly researched. Perhaps that can also be a flaw because it can get detailed, some of the details I could have done without. I'd love to see a Masterpiece Theater series based on her life.

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was introduced to the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay this past semester when I took an Intro to Poetry class. We read “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed” and “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why.” From that point on, I have been a major fan of Millay’s work and I wanted to know more about her. So I looked around for a good biography to read and found Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Vincent (as Millay was known by family and friends) was a fascinating woman, living in a fascinating time period. She was bold, creative, and charismatic, drawing people to her with her child-like beauty, her voice, passion and sheer talent. Reading excerpts from her letters and diaries was interesting and entertaining. (At times, especially when she was a college student at Vassar, she comes across almost like a character from a Lucy Maud Montgomery book (like Emily Byrd Starr) albeit one that smokes, acts out, and has a LOT more sex that any character Montgomery would ever have written about).

Having said all that, Nancy Milford’s Savage Beauty was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Milford is fairly successful in recounting Vincent’s early years from childhood, up through college and into the beginning of her career and marriage but the book eventually gets bogged down and lags more than a little towards the end before abruptly stopping in a rather unsatisfying conclusion. Also the author lacked a certain sympathy with her subject that would have allowed her to discuss some of the more sensitive parts of Vincent’s life without coming across as gossiping, judgmental and exploitative. She also allowed her personal hostility towards Norma Millay, Vincent’s sister and her source for much of the book, to be painfully obvious in the text. Even as she depends on Norma to provide access to Vincent’s papers and to recount her own recollections, Milford also makes not-so-subtle digs at her and questions Norma’s accuracy and motivations in providing the stories. It makes the narrator of the book come across as an unlikeable, sneering, insinuating, condescending gossip. During the parts of the book where Milford doesn’t intrude too much and allows Vincent to speak for herself through the documents she left behind, I enjoyed the book. I just wish there had been more of it.

I would love to read another, better biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.