Edna St. Vincent Millay, an esteemed American poet of the early 20th century, is celebrated for both her lyrical mastery and her unconventional lifestyle.
Born on February 22, 1892, in Rockland, Maine. Cora and Henry Millay separated when Edna was just a child. Edna, or Sefe as her sister called her, took care of the household while her mom Cora worked double shifts as a nurse.
The Millay household was a nurturing environment for creativity, where poetry and literature were highly valued. Edna’s mother, a strong and liberated woman for her time, encouraged her daughters to pursue education and express themselves. Edna started collecting her own verse during her teenage years. She wrote beautiful lyrical poetry that she wished would someday pay the bills and relieve her mom from her burden.
Driven to be the best, Edna graduated from High School with honors and took care of all family dispatches. She followed a strict schedule and had no interest in boys. She did kiss a boy in school where she thought to herself that she could kiss boys and not really feel anything towards them.
Henry Millay almost died and during this period a brief relationship between his daughter Edna began. She thrived in her late relationship with her father and neglected work at home where her sister desperately needed her help. She returned from taking care of her father with the lure of poetry contest prize money. She wrote and sent out “Renascence” to
multiple contests and won. One of the judges pointed out that this girl should be in university and the editor of the periodical publishing the poem called her a Pre-Raphaelite Beauty. He went on to say that this one poem can move mountains and will enroll a girl into Vassar.
In addition to familial influences, Millay’s education played a pivotal role in shaping her artistic career. Attending Vassar College, she flourished within a community that championed women’s rights and intellectual liberty. It was here that she fully embraced her bohemian identity, participating in the vibrant cultural atmosphere of the 1910s. Millay was not only a top student but also an active member of the college’s literary circles. Her experience at Vassar solidified her belief in the importance of a woman's voice.
As she graduated and entered the literary scene of New York City, Millay fully immersed herself in a bohemian lifestyle, characterized by artistic freedom, unconventional relationships, and social activism. She adopted a persona that embodied the ideals of artistic rebellion, often rejecting the constraints placed on women in traditional society. Millay's lifestyle, marked by her relationships with both men and women, her open discussions on sexuality, and her critique of societal norms, reflected the freedoms she was slowly carving out for herself. This pursuit of authenticity became a recurring theme in her poetry, which resonated with an audience yearning for emotional depth.
Then she met and married Eugene…
Jamie Lee Hamann
