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Article: All for love.(Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems)(Book review)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- April 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems, edited by J. D. McClatchy. Library of America, 225 pages, $20
reviewed by John Simon
Not so many years ago, the favorite poet of sophisticated high-schoolers and typical college students was Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). One had a mental image of a redheaded, fair-skinned imp of a girl from an obscure Maine background, having scandalous affairs at Vassar and in Greenwich Village--a poet garlanded by age twenty, a bohemian free spirit dedicated to living the artist's life, and, of course, a looker.
This image was true enough and helped the cause of Millay's poetry. The poetry returned the favor by ...