Edna St. Vincent Millay
Her career that spanned three decades and her work that ranges from lyrics to verse play and political commentary. Edna St. Vincent Millay is mostly known for her earlier works, such as "Renascence", Few Figs Thistles, and Second April. Millay wrote about things such as mystical views on the universe, god, death, celebration of feminism, and free love. It's almost as if she was a writer from today and with that, I believe that she would be comfortable with today's free America.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine on February 2, 1892. She was the first daughter of three girls; her parents, Cora Buzzelle Millay and Henry Tolman Millay. Millay's parents divorced in 1900 and her mother settled with Millay and two sisters in Camden, Maine. She was influenced by her mother, who encouraged her daughters' interests in arts and raised them to be self-reliant with love of books and music. Cora taught Millay to write peotry when she was four and to play the piano at the age of seven (Gray 123).
Millay first published a poem at age fourteen, it was published in St. Nicholes magazine, which was a children periodical that continued to publish her young works. Her writing kept improving as she wrote and edited for her school magazine at Camden High School. Millay was later encouraged by her mother to submit a poem called "Renascence"; Millay's poem was ranked at the top five in the contest. Millay, later entered Vassar College to pursue her talent. There, Millay concentrated her studies on literature, drama, and classic and modern languages. Sometimes she even had her poems published in the Vassar Miscellany and acted in school dramas.(Millay par. 3)
After her graduation, Millay's...
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...a way of understanding life. If we are moved by ones reading, or we get something knowledgeable out of it, then it was worth reading. Millay wrote of many informational things of life and moved readers in her day, but these people didn't know what to think about the truth; they weren't ready for that yet. Millay would be very pleased of today's America. We are very diverse. She was just ahead of her time and people didn't know how to accept her experimental writings.
Bibliography:
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Quartermain, Peter, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Poets 1880-1945. Vol 45 Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1986.
Gray, James. American Writers III. University of Minnesota 1974
http://www.personal.ksu.edu Edna St. Vincent Millay. December 1, 2000.
Edna St. Vincent Millay grew up in a small town in Maine. She was always encouraged by her mother to pursue her writing and musical talents. She finished college and moved to New York City where she lived a fast pace life pursuing acting and play writing. Her liveliness, independence, and sexuality inspired her writing styles and gave her poetry a freshness that no others had. She is famous for writing sonnets like “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why.” This poem holds many metaphors and symbols pertaining to how certain seasons make people feel. She compares the feeling of nature with her personal feelings of being alone after having so many lovers.
Sarah Margaret Fuller is often referred to only as Margaret Fuller. The reason I chose to write about her is because I found it interesting that she is known as “America’s first true feminist” among other things such as an editor, journalist, teacher, and literary critic. I feel that since she was a female during the 1800s she worked hard to make a good name for herself. Her works that I chose to write about specifically are “The Great Lawsuit” which is a profound essay arguing for women’s equality, and “The Fourth of July” which was an essay written to describe the values Margaret believed America had lost.
Ella was born of William Fitzgerald and Temperance “Tempie” Fitzgerald (Gale 2005). She was born on April 25, 1917 in Newport News, Virginia (LLC 2017). Her parents were part of a common-law marriage, which means they lived together for a period of time and told there friends and family, that they were “married” but never went through an actual marriage ceremony (Gale 2005). Shortly after Ella was born,
Charters, Ann & Samuel. Literature and its Writers. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. 137-147. Print.
Remembered as a film and fashion icon, Audrey Hepburn lived a difficult, but accomplished life. She was born on May 4, 1929 in Brussels, Belgium to Joseph Victor Hepburn-Ruston and Ella van Heemstr. Despite having a traumatizing childhood, she always believed that, “The most important thing is to enjoy life. To be happy. It’s all that matters.”
To overcome her troubles, she married at age nineteen and attempted to settle into the role of housewife and mother (Discovering Biographies 2). Shortly after her marriage, Anne enrolled in a modeling course at the Hart Agency and lived in San Francisco and Baltimore (Academy of American Poets 1). During this time Anne was also educated at Earland Junior College from 1947- 1948 (Twentieth Century American Literature 2). Through out her early twenties, Sexton began to experience bouts of depression that eventually led to hospitalization (Discovering Biographies 2). In 1955, after the birth of her second daughter, Sexton attempted suicide (Discovering Biographies 2). She was then placed under the care of Dr. Martin Orne, who encouraged her to write poems as a form of therapy (Discovering Biographies 1). “Poetry gave me a rebirth at age twenty-nine” (American Literature 3591), Anne quoted many times during her career. Anne deeply admired and attempted to emulate the confessional poem “Heart’s Needle” by Shodgrass (Discovering Biographies 2). Sexton decided to enroll in Robert Lowell’s graduate writing seminar at the Boston Center for Adult Education (Discovering Biographies 2). She then went on to be a scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study from 1961- 1963 (American Literature 3596).
Poets in American history have struggled over time to create or find a distinct American voice among the many different cultural influences and borrowed styles. Each era of poets contributed to the search in a slightly different way, but it was the modernists that really sought to make poetry new. A group to these modernists, called the expatriates, thought that the only way to obtain a new voice would be to escape any ties with old traditions, and to leave the country that held them captive in an inspirationaless environment. Turned off by America, they left for Europe only to rediscover America, and in turn, contribute enormously to the growth and development of the American voice.
Masson, Davis. Essays Biographical and Critical: Chiefly on English Poets. La Vergne, Tennessee: Lightning Source, Inc., 2007.
Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where and Why" is an effective short poem, which feeds on the dissonance between the ideal of love and its reality, heartbreak. In William Shakespeare's "Let Me Not to The Marriage of True Minds," the effectiveness is weakened by its idealiality and metaphysical stereotype. In contrast to Millay, Shakespeare paints a genuine portrait of what love should be but unfortunately never really is. This factor is what makes his poem difficult to relate to, thus weakening the effect on the reader. These poems were published quite far apart from each other, three-hundred and fourteen years to be exact, which might explain the shift in idealism. Though both circumnavigate the concept of love, the effect left within both writers based on personal affairs dramatically differentiates the personas of both speakers.
and Other Greats : Lessons from the All-star Writer's Workshop. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Print.
Pattee, Fred Lewis. A History of American Literature Since 1870 . Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992.
... she addressed many problems of her time in her writings. She was an inspirational person for the feminism movements. In fact, she awoke women’s awareness about their rights and freedom of choice. She was really a great woman.
Works Cited “American Literature 1865-1914.” Baym 1271. Baym, Nina et al. Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.
Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “Love Is Not All.” Making Arguments about Literature: A Compact Guide And Anthology. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. 349.