Richard Vallance
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Vallance Review 43, March 2005
"Fatal Interview" with Edna Saint Vincent Millay
Edna Saint Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
In 1931 Millay published Fatal Interview, a volume of 52 sonnets in celebration of a recent love affair (with George Dillon in Paris, 1928). Edmund Wilson claimed the book contained some of the greatest poems of the 20th century [2].
Edna Saint Vincent Millay (1892-1950) Biography [1]
Edna St Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine on 22 February 1892 [2] Hers was a non-conformist childhood. From age 7 on, her father was never around, as her mother, Cora, a nurse, had insisted on an early separation. Cora encouraged her daughters to pursue a sound musical and literary education. Edna, a real tomboy, whom her closest friends nicknamed "Vincent", was brought up to be fiercely independent by her mother, who inculcated in her the virtues of self-sufficiency and ambition. An early example of Millay's strong will surfaced the time her splendid poem, "Renascence" only won fourth prize in a poetry contest when she was only 20 years old (1912). She had the audacity to indulge in emotional blackmail with the totally false claim her mother had dissolved in tears, exclaiming, "My mother is crying. Did you ever hear your mother cry as if her heart would break? It is a strange and terrible sound. I think I shall never forget it.” [3,6] When the same poem was published in 1917, it garnered her instant literary fame and earned her a scholarship to Vassar, where she kept on writing more outstanding poetry and became involved in the theatre. Her early poetry book, The Harp Weaver, and Other Poems, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1922.
Millay's Penchant for Left Wing Politics [2]:
Once she had left Vassar College, Millay settled in bohemian Greenwich Village, where she began to court men. There she got involved in the left-wing journal, The Masses, joining her male comrades in their campaign against America's involvement in the First World War. In 1927, Millay got herself into hot water when she protested loudly against the execution of two Spanish activists in Boston. In fact, the demonstration was incitement enough for Millay to publish The Buck and the Snow (1928), which featured highly politicized poems like, "Hangman's Oak", "The Anguish" and "To Those Without Pity". In Wine From These Grapes (1934) and again in Huntsman, What Quarry? (1939), Millay continued to vociferously espouse pacifism, and to rail against the pitiable outcome of the Spanish Civil War and the rise of fascism. However, in World War II, Millay eschewed her pacifism, turning to writing patriotic poems.
Millay's "Ambivalent" Sexuality [1,2]:
While she was at Vassar Millay first became intimate with other women, such as Wynne Matthison, a British actress, who invited her to her summer home. The nature of their relationship is made clear enough from one of her letters to Matthison, in which she writes (in part),
"You wrote me a beautiful letter,-- I wonder if you meant it to be as beautiful as it was.-- I think you did; for somehow I know that your feeling for me, however slight it is, is of the nature of love... When you tell me to come, I will come, by the next train, just as I am. This is not meekness, be assured; I do not come naturally by meekness; know that it is a proud surrender to You."
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Millay even admitted that she was a bisexual, and had affairs with women before her marriage, while at the same time indulging in amorous adventures with her male friends. Millay was bound to raise a few eyebrows in the staid early 1920s when in 1922 she published her poetry anthology, A Few Figs from Thistles, in which she made revolutionary assertions concerning female sexuality, with the rash claim, at least for the early twentieth century, that a woman had every right to sexual pleasure and no more obligation to fidelity than her male counterpart. In his memoirs, Floyd Dell, her first male lover, asserted it was his duty to rescue her from homosexuality, only to be sorely disillusioned when she continued having affairs with women after she broke up with him, refusing his hand in marriage. "It was", he said," impossible to understand [Millay]....I've often thought she may have been fonder of women than of men." He may have been right.
Another twentieth century writer, Max Eastman, told the fascinating anecdote about Millay's ambivalent attitude towards her sexuality. According to Eastman, when a psychologist ventured to ask her, "I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that you might perhaps, although you are hardly conscious of it, have an occasional impulse toward a person of your own sex?", she tartly replied, "Oh, you mean I'm homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual, too, but what's that got to do with my headache?"
In 1923, she married Eugen Boissevain, who, like Millay, believed in free love [2] and was himself a self-avowed feminist. Their marriage was reputed to have been sexually open. Millay even claimed her husband left her ample room for personal sexual expression, and that they lived like "two bachelors" until his death in 1949. Millay died in Austerlitz on October 19, 1950 of heart failure [8].
Edna Saint Vincent Millay's Sonnets
Although she was a playwright, Millay shines in her lyrical poetry, and most notably in her sonnets, of which she wrote a great many. While Millay's personal life was anything but conventional, in her poetry she resorted mainly to traditional verse forms, primarily the ballad and the sonnet. Some critics claim that her love poems are not particularly erotic [3], though psychologically sound and deeply moving they certainly are. Justifiably, her most famous sonnet collection is Fatal Interview (1931) [2,7], comprised of 52 sonnets in celebration of her recent love affair in Paris with George Dillon, 14 years her junior. Edmund Wilson claimed the book contained some of the greatest poems of the 20th century. By and large, the emotional psychology underpinning Millay's sonnets, particularly those in Fatal Interview is intensely personal and vivid, verging on the tragic.
A "Fatal Interview" with Edna Saint Vincent Millay
What follows is an altogether fictitious interview which our reviewer, Richard Vallance, presumes to have with the famous American sonneteer. This interview is "fatal" in so many ways: Edna Saint Vincent Millay is deceased; that is fatality. In light of the fact that our reviewer is also a sonneteer of some note, it may even be said that the "Fates" may well have decreed this interview should take place. And, like Millay herself, this reviewer being no exception to the general precept, we are all alike subject to the whims and vagaries of love's cruel demands and to the finality of death itself.
We have based our assumptions for this interview on reconstructed evidence from the biographies and literary sources for Edna Saint Vincent on the Internet (References & Notes, [2] - [8] below), from reconstructed conversations Millay either actually or presumably had with her friends, lovers and acquaintances (from the same sources), and from the stream of consciousness that emerges from our reading of the 52 sonnets comprising Fatal Interview as a whole. Where our imaginary interview highlights specific sources from [2] - [8] below, these sources are flagged by their References & Notes number(s).
Obviously, much of what emerges from our critical interpretation of Millay's strongly psychological sonnet sequence is sheer conjecture. However, it must be borne in mind that this reviewer and Millay are both accomplished modern sonneteers, that both have composed plenty of psychological sonnets focusing on issues surrounding personal love relationships, both are outspoken personalities and both share ambivalent sexuality. Whether this "qualifies" this reviewer to dare indulge in such an imaginary interview is perhaps a moot point. Still, there is nothing to prevent the venture. So, without further ado, here is Richard Vallance's virtual interview with Edna Saint Vincent Millay on her sonnet sequence, Fatal Interview (1931).
The Interview
| Richard: | Ms. Millay, do you mind if I call you Edna? I have had the opportunity to read and reread your book of 52 sonnets, Fatal Interview, which you published in 1931, and I dare say I am greatly impressed with the deeply penetrating manner in which you have treated the matter of love in your own personal experience, as you have related it in this book. What exactly is Fatal Interview about?
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| Edna: |
While these 52 sonnets deal solely with the entire course of my affair with George Dillon in Paris in 1928, from its outset to its eventual sad disintegration [7], I have in fact fallen head over heels in love several times in my lifetime, not only with men, but with women too. If you must know, "People fall in love with me, and annoy me and distress me and flatter me and excite me.'' [3, spoken at Vassar College] I have never made any secret about the fact that I am bisexual. Why, just a while ago, a psychologist asked me if it ever occurred to me that, because of my recurring headaches, I might perhaps have an occasional impulse toward a person of my own sex, whether I was conscious of it or not. It was a silly question from a silly man. I merely replied, "Oh, you mean I'm homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual, too, but what's that got to do with my headache?"
People have often upbraided me for being uppity and a maverick. But that's of little consequence to me. What does matter to me a great deal is the depth and vitality of my intimate relationships with those I have loved most in life, and that includes the men as well as the women. In this respect, I mean Fatal Interview to be a true-to-life psychological mirror of my love affair with George Dillon, however stormy it may have been.
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| Richard: | I understand George Dillon was fourteen years your junior when you got amorously entangled with him.
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| Edna: |
Well, yes. But I have always been rather strongly attracted to beautiful young men. That much is evident from my sonnet XXXV in Fatal Interview, where I have this to say in praise of George's rather outstanding physical merits:
Taking your love and all your loveliness
Into a listening body hushed of sighs . . .
Though summer's rife and the warm rose in season,
Rebuke me not... [9]
If George Dillon had no earthly reason to rebuke me, a woman well over a decade his senior, for falling in love with him, I see no reason at all why anyone else should.
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| Richard: | Hmmm, yes, I can certainly see where you're coming from. When I was 47, I myself had an affair with a young man of 34. The age difference is approximately the same. At any rate, would you venture to say that Fatal Interview is typical of your work as a poet?
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| Edna: | If you mean, is Fatal Interview typical of my style as a poet, I would have to say, yes. Folks have always known me as a lyrical poet, with a strong penchant for the sonnet as form. I find the sonnet greatly encourages me to exercise a strong literary discipline over my wayward emotions as a human being. We are all of us subject to the vagaries of our intensest emotions in the heat of love, as you surely know, Richard. But the lyric poet, and above all, the sonneteer is well positioned to take real advantage of the unique opportunities the sonnet affords as a strict genre to channel and focus the pent-up energies of love in all its fiery avatars, and to express one's love in truly imaginative and gripping ways. Take for instance, the following passages from Fatal Interview -- you don't mind if I quote my own poetry ad libidum? -- I am very fond of reciting my own sonnets and lyrics aloud. I find I am really fired by a live audience [6]. As I just said, the heat of love and its fiery passions make great demands on both the lovers in the book, and this I make explicit in the sonnets. Listen to this from the first sonnet in the book:
I
What sweet emotions neither foe nor friend
Are these that clog my flight?
and this, from Sonnet IV:
IV
Alas, the sick disorder in my flesh
Is deeper than your skill, is very love.
My love for George was all-consuming. It ravished my body; it ravaged my heart. Here is another example of how visceral was my love for this wayward, though lovely, young man.
As you can see, I wanted him to harbour no secrets of his prior love affairs from me. In fact, I thrived on those little secrets. It's just my way. It's quite titillating, you know, not only to me, but to many a lover in this otherwise sad world of ours.
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| Richard: | Oh yes, I can relate to that. Still, all this raises in my mind the spectre of your relations with all those other men and women in your life. Have you had many lovers? I realize the question is unduly personal. I am not looking for names or particulars. I am just curious about the extent of passion in your life.
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| Edna: | Yes, the question is most certainly personal. However, lyric poets, by the very nature of the "beast", that is to say, the essence of the poetry they have committed themselves to write, by dint of their métier, relinquish to some extent the claim to privacy reserved to the rest of humanity. I don't mean that lyric poets share all their love secrets with the world. Far be it from me to do anything like that. I am as secretive about my private love affairs as the next person. But my lyric poems, and certainly those in Fatal Interview, lay bare the psychological wellsprings of my passion for George Dillon. By the same token, these sonnets, along with so many of my sonnets addressed to other individuals with whom I have fallen in love, must perforce reveal much of my own passionate personality, as well as that of the person I love addressed in any particular sonnet. And they surely do. Of course, if we examine the love sonnets of William Shakespeare, Elisabeth Barrett Browning or Rupert Brooke, we find a similar psychological "Stürm und Drang" underscoring them. And, as you know, Richard, I am scarcely the first poet to have directly addressed homosexual love. Certainly the poems of Oscar Wilde and even, in certain particular instances, of Rupert Brooke [11], dealt with the so-called "unmentionable" passion. That being said, Fatal Interview is explicitly about heterosexual love. There are, of course, passing references to homoeroticism in it, though. You can find them scattered here and there throughout.
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| Richard: | Does it make any real difference to you that a poet is man or a woman, when dealing with the subject of love and passion?
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| Edna: | Of course not! After all, Elisabeth Barrett Browning wrote 43 sonnets in the same vein, and Christina Rossetti celebrated her love for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, himself another stunner, in her own sonnets. Make no mistake about it. Women have every right to express the full depth and breadth of their passions, just as much as any man [4]. And in Fatal Interview, I do just that. Look, here we have, for instance:
Love sears and burns the breast, just as it did for Paris and Helen. I will have it out. And if you ever had the slightest doubt that I, being the poetess-Venus I am, should not have ravished my darling George, and made passionate love to him, doubt no more. In sonnet XV I roundly declare:
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| Richard: | Why that sonnet reminds me for all the world of Alan Seeger's Sonnet XVI I reviewed in 2004, in which he exults, in strikingly similar language:
Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day.
Naked, uplifting in a laden tray
New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine,... [12]
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| Edna: | That's no accident. I am quite familiar with that sonnet of Alan Seeger's. It is an exquisite piece, and surely as beautiful as was Alan Seeger himself. I only wish I had met him. I am sure he would have appealed to me greatly. After all, it is the heat my relationships with those I have loved -- and loved intensely -- which fires and inspires my best poetry [4]. And it matters hardly a whit to me whether I am inspired to write of love for a man or another woman. These lines from Fatal Interview surely make that clear enough:
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| Richard: | Some critics have characterized your poetry, and notably, the 52 sonnets in Fatal Interview as being rather less erotic and more psychologically motivated. Do you view this as an accurate assessment of these sonnets' main impact on the reader?
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| Edna: | Granted it is true that some commentators don't focus much on the powerful claims of sexuality implicit everywhere in these sonnets, but I suppose it's fair to say the sonnets are by and large a psychological mirror of the rather stormy relationship I had with George Dillon. This is not to deny their innate sexual intensity. The emotions I am describing in the sonnets here are my own, and I make no qualms about it. I am also not afraid to address the real issues, the stresses and strains and the eventual falling out between myself and George, as the sonnets make this quite clear. Allow me to cite just a couple of sample verses which make the intensity of my passion for George quite explicit and also address his deep emotional bond with me. I have always been forthright in expressing my emotions, my ideas about love and my experiences with my lovers [4]. In these two sonnets, for instance, you'll hear me proclaim the intensity my love for George, without the slightest qualm:
XXI
I find again the pink camellia-bud
On the wide step, beside a silver comb ...
But it is scentless; up the marble stair
I mount with pain, knowing you are not there.
XIV
Seeing how to quit your arms is very death,
'Tis likely that I shall not die again;
And it was like a living death to be separated from him, he consumed me so. The eventual breakup of our relationship was to prove even more devastating, if anything, as you can see from the last few sonnets, as they trace the dissolution of our love every painful step of the way. First there is my desire to see my lover off on friendly terms, wishing him no ill:
XXIX
Love me no more, now let the god depart,
If love be grown so bitter to your tongue!
Here is my hand; I bid you from my heart
Fare well, fare very well, be always young.
Yet, as you surely know yourself, Richard, from your own experiences with love found and love lost, the aftermath of losing one's lover is far, far more devastating than merely bidding him farewell:
Are my feelings ambivalent about losing George, about losing any of my dear, dear lovers? Of course! How could it be otherwise?
Still, as the old saying goes, "it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all", and I have echoed this sentiment vividly where I conclude of George (as well I might of anyone whom I have loved with my whole body and heart):
In spite of all that, though, Richard, I sometimes wish I had never even met the man, his face haunts me so.
XLIX
A face I never again must call to mind;
In spite of everything, though, I don't really regret having lost my love for George, for I would much rather have loved him, and as intensely as I did, than not to have loved him or anyone the way I always inevitably do. Not to have loved at all would have been a fate worse than death.
I simply cannot imagine anyone not abandoning himself or herself to the tumult of passion and love. Can you, Richard? Oh, and I hope you don't mind my quoting so many of my verses from the sonnets in Fatal Interview. I do so love to read my poetry aloud [6, in depth].
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| Richard: | No, not at all. Feel free to read your stirring verses aloud to your heart's content. And, yes, it is tragic when anyone in this world has never really experienced the ravages, as well as the joys of love burning in the breast.
Well, now that we have dealt at some length with the psychology of your love relations with George Dillon and other lovers besides, I would like to move on to other considerations with respect to Fatal Interview. First, I am curious to know whether you consider yourself to be an avant-garde twentieth century poet and lyricist.
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| Edna: | Well, if you you mean in my use of poetic forms or genres, I would have to say no. In this respect I am pretty much a traditionalist. I almost always write in more traditional formal verse forms, with a strong preference for the ballad, the quatrain and, as you know, in particular the sonnet. I suppose some critics and poetry readers these days, in the 1920s and '30s, might tend to view me as rather "old-fashioned" in contrast to the more experimental poets of today. But, you have to remember that more conservative poets such as William Butler Yeats, Archibald MacLeish, Robert Frost and I myself, still flourish alongside the "New Poets" [4]. And I think that's because there are plenty of poetry readers out there who much prefer to latch onto more readily accessible poets, whose poetry appeals directly to one's emotions.
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| Richard: | On the other hand, when it comes to the use of language, your style of English, your expressivity and the psychology of your lyric poetry and, above all, the actual language of your sonnets, I venture to assert you are more of a "modernist".
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| Edna: | Well, yes, pretty much. I think most readers can easily identify with the colloquial approach I often take in my sonnets, which sets them apart from the more formal English style we find in nineteenth century and earlier sonneteers, such as John Milton, John Keats, E.B. Browning and Christina Rossetti. No more "thee's" and "thou's" in my sonnets. I tend to shy away from archaisms, except where certain lovely anachronistic words like "liefer", which I used three times in these 52 sonnets, appeal to my sensibilities. If you'll permit, allow me to cite just a couple of examples of modern English as you will find it in my sonnets in Fatal Interview:
That's an analogy to a car, no question about it. You wouldn't find that sort of imagery even in sonnets of the early twentieth century, with the possible exception of Alan Seeger, as you know [13]. I am also partial to verbal ellipsis, another convention you won't usually find in sonnets prior to the twentieth century, as in:
XVII
When all's requited and the future's sworn,
The happy hour can leave within the breast,
I had not so come running at the call
Of one who loves me little, if at all.
You'll also note, in this same sonnet, my use of the trailing conversational phrase, "if at all", which I insert almost as an afterthought right at the tail end of the sonnet... another modern innovation in the sonnet. In fact, my sonnets can at times verge on the conversational, which makes for more accessible reading with my intended audience, which I wish to be as large and culturally varied as possible [4, see notes 14].
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| Richard: | On a final note, I would like to ask you, Edna, how it is you have managed to gain such wide popularity and such a huge readership? I understand you sold over 50,000 copies of Fatal Interview almost immediately after its publication in 1932 [7]. That's an astounding huge initial sales distribution for a book of poetry!
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| Edna: | Well, you know what I always say -- and again I am quoting directly from Fatal Interview:
You are of course familiar with the "Everyman's" literature series of novels, essays, poetry etc., Richard. Well, that's partly the inspiration for this little snippet of verse in my sonnet XIX. Anyway, if you must know, I am eminently fond of reciting, indeed, almost singing my own sonnets, as you must have gathered from listening to the drama of the recordings of my past recitals. Why, my friend, Floyd Dell recently said of me that he had he had "never heard poetry read so beautifully" [7]. That is really quite a compliment, which I graciously accept.
Yes, I do so love to stress the nuanced song-like quality of my verse [4]. Actually, “I have got a beautiful speaking voice" [6]. Why, Louis Untermeyer recently said of me, “There was no other voice like hers in America.” And Edmund Wilson, who was another of my lovers, recently wrote me to tell me how much the recordings of my poems meant to him [6]. Well, that meant a lot to me, of course. My speaking voice shines through in my frequent radio recitals, as for instance, my recent radio broadcast of Fatal Interview itself [6], and in my recordings. I have made plenty of those. One reporter, on listening to one of my radio recitals, recently went so far as to call me the ultimate "poet-girl" [6]. Can you imagine? Well, I can, although I can't say I am very keen being called a "girl".
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| Richard: | In other words, you are fond of exploiting the many benefits of modern media.
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| Edna: | That's it, in a nutshell. Actually, in 1932, I started up a weekly radio broadcast of poetry, the first of its kind in America. It was that broadcast in particular which catapulted the sales of Fatal Interview past 50,000 copies [6], you know. Some folks, even my own mother, have called me "capricious", because I am so fond of promoting my own poetry. I just told my mother, “You see, I am a poet, and not quite right in the head, darling. It’s only that.” [6] She had to laugh, of course. It's all part and parcel of my "public persona", I suppose you could say [6]. I make no apologies for it, or for anything I have ever done to promote my own poetry. After all, no one else can or will popularize my poetry or my public persona, unless I do it myself. That's the way the publishing business runs, as I am sure you must realize, Richard.
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| Richard: | Yes, this has been my experience too. Well, then, Edna, do you have any parting words of advice, any send-offs for us all regarding Fatal Interview and its stellar publishing success?
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| Edna: | Sad as it is to say, at a personal and intimate level, the book reflects the darkest concerns of my own life over my many love affairs, as typified and illustrated so vividly in my affair with George Dillon. All this comes through forcefully in these sonnets, where I lament:
XXII
Before this moon shall darken, say of me:
She's in her grave, or where she wants to be.
L
The heart once broken is a heart no more,
And is absolved from all a heart must be;
All that it signed or chartered heretofore
Is cancelled now, the bankrupt heart is free;
And I suppose that, in spite of everything, considering the book's huge sales and the fact that my love life has been a roller-coaster ride from start to finish, I could sum it all up in one pithy aphorism, which is this:
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| Richard: | Thank you, Ms. Millay, for this most insightful interview!
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CONCLUSIONS
Edna Saint Vincent Millay's Fatal Interview and other sonnets, like those of Alan Seeger (1888-1916) and Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) before her, are illustrative of the emerging trends in the continuing evolution of the sonnet as genre in the twentieth century. Seeger, Brooke and Millay more or less eschewed the more traditional cast of the semantics of the sonnet as it had been practiced as poetic form in the Romantic and Victorian eras immediately preceding them. Largely absent from their sonnets are the use of archaic English, which had persisted right through the nineteenth century, even in the sonnets of the likes of E.B. Browning, Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Gone were the "thee's" and "thous", and the more melodic, yet more artificial, language of the Romantic poets.
While these three early twentieth century sonneteers did adhere quite strictly to the fundamental tenets underlying the sonnet as form, in no wise abandoning the long since tried, tested and passed Shakespearian or Petrarchan models, they were all instrumental in modernizing the language of sonnets, bringing it squarely into the twentieth century. They also further diversified and expanded the spectrum of subjects sonnets could treat of, by introducing such thematic matter as modern technology and psychology.
Lastly, Millay herself is, to this day, widely acclaimed as one of the first sonneteers in history to make extensive use of the media, in the guise of radio broadcasts. Since then, the field has further widened to include television, multimedia and, of course, the Internet, which twenty-first century sonneteers may freely avail themselves of, as indeed so many of us do. In this sense, Edna Saint Vincent Millay was a trend setter, in every sense of that word.
Unfortunately, as this reviewer has had occasion to observe so very often, even at the outset of the Third Millennium, many, many would-be contemporary sonneteers of our own day and age still often resort to the use of archaic and affected language, unnatural word inversions, forced rhymes based on stilted phrasing and over reliance on traditional sonnet themes. Ever since the late twentieth century, in fact, many avant-garde sonneteers, including this reviewer, have even abandoned initial capitalization of the first word of each verse, following the practice of 14 of the twentieth century contributors to the latest edition of The Oxford Book of Sonnets [15]. Yes, even that tradition is falling by the wayside. The point simply is this: initial capitalization, except at the beginning of sentences and possibly also stanzas, is not carved in stone. It is merely an arbitrary convention.
If some of us, as would-be modern sonneteers of the early twenty-first century, really do need advice or guidance on the "how to" of composing the modern sonnet, we can just as easily resort to adopting certain basic principles of "modern" sonnet writing, as outlined in such sites as The Canadian Federation of Poets, Poetry Lessons, Lesson & Exercises, Week 18: Sonnets, by Richard Vallance, and others like it, by googling the Internet. However, the best counsel is akin to Millay's, "The Latin's vulgar, but the advice is sound." If you are venturing into the world of sonneteering, follow your own instincts, your intuition, your "muse". Above all, exercise the strict discipline of sonnet composition to the best of your native ability, always keeping uppermost in mind that the traditional sonnet forms are the historically tried, tested and most appropriate structures to adhere to, however modern your language or your thematics.
© by Richard Vallance February 25 2005, with the editorial assistance of Jim Dunlap, Mitchell Geller and Carmen Ruggero.
REFERENCES & NOTES:
[1] Most of the biographical background notes for this review are garnered from this source: Edna St. Vincent Millay. Where other sources are used in this review, these are highlighted by the appropriate note no. below.
[2] Edna St. Vincent Millay (biography)
[3] Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
[4] Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950): Classroom Issues and Strategies. Contributing Editor: John J. Patton
[5] Edna Saint Vincent Millay: inscriptions
[6] Lyric Opera What Courtney Love might’ve learned from Millay and Dickinson, by Meghan O'Rourke
[7] Poetry Graves: Edna Saint Vincent Millay. This article makes the following astonishing claim on the initial sales of Fatal Interview: "... In 1928 she went to Paris to meet her lover, George Dillon. This affair inspired Fatal Interview (1931), a sequence of fifty-two sonnets, which sold 50,000 copies within months."
[8] Women in American History: Edna Saint Vincent Millay
[9] Read all the sonnets in Fatal Interview online at: Viola Fair. Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay. From, "Fatal Interview"
[10] Millay, Edna Saint Vincent. Fatal Interview: Sonnets by Edna Saint Vincent Millay. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, © MXMXXXI (1931). x, 52 pp. [from the private collection of Richard Vallance]
[11] For more information on Rupert Brooke's ambivalent sexual orientation, refer to Vallance Review 15, November 2002: "Rupert Brooke's, 'The Dead' "
[12] Vallance Review 32, April 2004, Part 1: Alan Seeger, a Modern "Renaissance" Poet?
[13] Vallance Review 33, May 2004, Part 2: Alan Seeger, a True Romantic at Heart, where we find Seeger specifically refers to car horns, buses and trams in his sonnet VI:
Give me the treble of thy horns and hoofs,
The ponderous undertones of 'bus and tram,...
[14] FROM [4] above, we have the following commentary on Millay's continued popularity through to the end of the twentieth century (and surely into the twenty-first):
Millay continues to appeal to a large audience, as shown by the publication in the fall of 1987 of a new edition of her sonnets, a volume of critical essays, and an annotated bibliography of secondary sources. A very large audience of readers in her own time admired her frequent outspokenness, her freshness of attitude, her liberated views as a woman, and the reflection in her poetry of an intensely contemporary sensibility. She is quintessentially modern in her attitude and viewpoint even if her language is often redolent of earlier poets. Although it is true that Millay's poetry has great appeal to women readers, she must not be either presented or viewed as writing solely for women because of the evident limitations it would place on appreciation of her accomplishment.
[15] Fuller, John, ed. The Oxford Book of Sonnets. Oxford, Oxford University Press, © 2000. xxxiv, 362 pp. ISBN 0-19-214267-4.
Richard Vallance is the author of:
Canadian Federation of Poets: Poetry Lessons: Lesson & Exercise - Week 18 SONNETS
in The Canadian Federation of Poets weekly Poetry Progress Lessons & Exercises series
The Vallance Review is frequently cited in our Canadian sonnet journal, SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1706-4524. To read the current issue or any back issues, you may visit the sonnet journal's Home Page here:
SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1705-4524
The first ever PRINT issue of SONNETTO POESIA (Vol. 4 no. 2) is to be released on March 21 2005. Keep posted. The current issue of Poetry Life & Times provides subscrption information on SONNETTO POESIA.
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