★★★★☆ The summer-upper

The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St Vincent Millay

I read a couple pages of poetry every morning. I find I cannot simply read a book of poetry from cover to cover as I would a novel. After reading a few poems, I lose the ability to appreciate them. I need to let them bounce around in the back of my head for a while to get them. Because I read only a page or two a day, I favor "selected poetry" books like this Dover Thrift publication. In this way I hope to read a poet's best work over the course of a month or two.

The problem with this strategy, of course, is that it puts me at the mercy of the person doing the selecting. For instance, my favorite Millay poem Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare, is not included in this collection

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

OK, fine. Obviously I had already read that one.

Judging by this collection I would imagine that most of Millay's poetry concerned the hackneyed poetic themes of romantic love and nature. I do not, however, know if that's Millay's or Digireads' limitation. The poem I quoted above would suggest a greater range. Indeed, such wider interests are not absent from this selection.

Now, while I referred to romantic love and nature as hackneyed themes, I want to add that Millay's poems on these themes are NOT hackneyed. When Millay writes about nature, she writes as one who really sees it, all of it, not just flowers and trees. For instance, one of her poems is about "Eel-grass". Her love poetry is also distinctive. Millay doesn't write of eternal love. Indeed, in her poems love is a fleeting thing. Not casual -- never that -- but she expects it to end, and although she laments when it does, one feels transience is part of what makes love what it is to her.

Millay's poems end well. Most of her poems end with a powerful, concise, quotable summing up. When I was eleven my family moved from a house near the Atlantic to an inland home. Around that time I read Millay's poem "Exiled", which ends with these two lines

I am too long away from water.
I have a need of water near.

It was what I felt. This is one of the things I look for in poetry -- words that express what I feel.

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