 |
Edna St. Vincent Millay |
Edna St. Vincent Millay, master of the classic sonnet form, was famous for her wildly unclassical lifestyle. She grew up poor in Maine until 1912 when her poem “Renascence” won her a scholarship and launched her high-flying career. By 1920 she was in New York’s Greenwich Village, living an openly bisexual life which she described as “very very poor, and very very merry”.
In 1923 she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She married Eugen Boissevain, twelve years her senior, and moved to Steepletop in the foothills of the Berkshires, her home for the rest of her life. She fought for many socialist and pacifist causes while continuing her affairs, especially with George Dillon, for whom the sonnets of Fatal Interview were written.
The book sold 50,000 copies in the first few months. She went on the speaker circuit and was highly popular, but a car accident in 1936 left her in chronic pain. She took drugs; she drank too much; and by 1944 she was exhausted. Her beloved husband died in 1949, and she died alone the following year, sitting at the bottom of a flight of stairs.
 |
Immortal Poets: Their Lives and Verse, by Christopher Burns |