I love this book. I don't read much poetry, but Edna St. Vincent Millay is one of the best poets I've ever read. Wonderful stuff. ( )

I’m not rating this just because I was mostly just trying to see if I could get more into poetry and I just think I prefer to read individual poems that I really like rather than a bind up from one author. I liked some of these poems and was bored by others but I definitely Milay is a very interesting poet and I think many people who are more into poetry would get a lot more out of this book than I did.

This was a decent collection of poetry by the famed poet, noted for her simple rhymes and layered poems. I found most of them to be palatable and that they were briskly able to be read through, one after the other, in succession to gain a greater understanding of the poet herself and what she thought, felt, and lived for. Overall, a good read and one for poetry enthusiasts.

3.25 stars. ( )

One of my favorites:

An Ancient Gesture
I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.

Thank you From

~~~~~~~~~
"Penelope, who really cried"….

Such strength in an envitalized metaphor -- tears.
The last stanza remembers the crocodile tears of Ulysses who only pretended to be moved, in order to avoid addressing the crowd of suitors. Penelope had really wept nightly in worry and fear, and curiously faithfully. Waiting twenty years for her husband to return from his Trojan lark. ( )

I would submit that Edna St. Vincent Millay may be the most underrated poet in the English language.

Was she a formalist, and therefore out of vogue? Too bad. Was she a naughty girl, and therefore sent to a place less than nice when she died? More power to her; I'm sure she felt right at home.

The woman who, as an undergrad at Vassar, defied the president of the college to expel her and was told "What? "And have a banished Shelley on my doorstep?" -- and who then allegedly responded "On those terms, I think I can continue to live in this hell hole" -- was obviously not someone to be trifled with.

Cheeky? No doubt. A hellcat? She could've set the wind on fire -- then have doused the flames in a wink with wit alone.

Every one of the sonnets in this collection is a gift to the reader. This book alone is worth a year's tuition at Vassar -- and would no doubt prove more valuable to the few who may be caught there (or at Smith, Wellesley, Barnard, Mount Holyoke, or Bryn Mawr) against their will. It's too bad Radcliffe merged with Harvard only well after her death. The only wonder is that she didn't rise from the grave to stop it -- or, instead, lead the movement to have Harvard merge with Radcliffe. ( )