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Article: Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. (Books in review: the enchantress).(Review)
- Article from:
- The American Prospect
- Article date:
- November 19, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 The American Prospect, Inc. 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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Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay By Nancy Milford. Random House, 550 pages, $29.95
THE LYRIC GIFT IS HARD TO sustain. How can you keep all that tension on the emotional string without stiffening into routines of feeling or, as poet Edna St. Vincent Millay did, tightening, tightening till it all goes pop?
Two new biographies show Millay's lifelong efforts to whet her own intensity and capture ecstasy in poetic form.
Into the golden vessel of great song
Let us pour all our passion; ...
Longing alone is singer to the lute;
Let still on nettles in the open sigh
The minstrel, that in slumber is as mute
As any ...