| Title | : | Renascence and Other Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 048626873X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780486268736 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 64 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1917 |
In 1917, "Renascence" was incorporated into her first volume of poetry, which is reprinted here, complete and unabridged, from the original edition. The 23 works in this first volume are fired with the romantic and independent spirit of youth that Edna St. Vincent Millay came to personify. In addition to "Renascence," this volume includes 16 other early lyric poems — "Interim," "Sorrow," "Ashes of Life," "Three Songs of Shattering," "The Dream," "When the Year Grows Old," and others, including six sonnets, to which Millay brought great distinction throughout her career.
Renascence and Other Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) Reviews
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She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.
Those concluding lines from Witch Wife, the jewel of this collection, were an early warning. Millay clearly was describing herself, both physically and spiritually. Already in this, her earliest collection, she had posted a largely unheeded warning to all the many suitors who would try and fail to posses her. The poem is beautiful and telling.
The title poem, Renascence, is odd and fascinating, many pages long. Written when she was just twenty and submitted to a national contest, it was the poem that first brought her national recognition and critical acclaim. It is unique among the Millay poems I have read, and though far from my favorite, it may be the most intriguing of her work.
Interim and The Suicide follow Renascence, and like it, they are long poems. (The three together make up two thirds of this slim volume.) Death is the theme of both. I love many of Millay’s poems of death, one of her constant themes, but these two early offering miss the mark. They drone on too long, and their tone struck me as being more akin to juvenile Goth culture than to Millay’s later, far more mature poems of death.
Millay broke the gloom of these two long poems with the exuberance of God’s World -
O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
She follows with several, brilliant shorter poems, including Tavern and the above mentioned Witch Wife.
As would become her tradition, the collection closed with several sonnets. The most striking sonnet here is number VI, wherein she reimagined the story of Bluebeard, not as murderousness revealed, but as trust and privacy breached. It is worth quoting in whole:
VI Bluebeard
THIS door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed…. Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see…. Look yet again—
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place. -
Millay is one of those poets I think oh sure, I've read, but then realized I really hadn't. This set of poems is some of her earliest work, and is stunning and incredible. Sometimes you have to give a poem a bit, look past the rhyming and look at the meaning. Other times it's not an effort at all. My favorites are the title poem and the six sonnets.
The most familiar poem in this volume is probably the one that starts:
"O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!"
Sound familiar? Good, now read the rest.
Happy National Poetry Month! -
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.
Tucked in for a night's slumber, I wasn't prepared for the energy of this verse. It appeared like a sudden storm, with mammoth, moving images: the colorful torque. Each page elicited the epic and the flawed personal. I was enchanted and duly want to read more of her work. -
Exquisite poetry !
Full review afterwards..... -
First, let me state my personal conviction that you never finish a good poem. It stays with you forever, in your mind. In a quiet moment, a line will be remembered with a clarity that is almost painful in its beauty. More often than not, that memory will lead you back to rereading the poem in its entirety. There is always something fresh, something new, in it- some new understanding, some new and wondrous appreciation for a metaphor, image. A good poem is a joy, always.
That said, Edna St. Vincent Millay is among those poets, besides Shakespeare, who lit my adolescent fire for poetry.
“The rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for
reply”
What romantic heart of any age could not respond to the loneliness in this line, or the lines after.
“thus in winter stands the lonely tree”
Have we not all felt like this, or something akin?
Renascence & Other Poems was the first published collection of her poems. I don’t know enough about formal poetry to critique style or meter by any standard. I know only that I am not shy about stealing (with accreditation) a line or two of hers in my own attempts at poetry.
The opening poem Renascence fosters a chant like vocalization that after a while seems oppressive, but the sense of a joyous rebirth, throughout this longer poem, eventually makes the couplet rhyme essential, and thus, forgivable. It could be done no other way.
Other verses in other styles have the same lyrical beauty, and the sonnets are splendidly unique.
To paraphrase the first line of her poem God’s World-
Edna, I can not hold the close enough! -
Sometimes - at first - I was unsure about the very obvious rhyme scheme. But the power of the words overcame that. In the title poem especially: such an amazing vision of transcendence, and from a 20 year old(?!)
And she sounds so alive (even when she writes of death). As if this were about her:
never shall one room contain me quite
Who in so many rooms first saw the light [Sonnet IV]
Sometimes there were a lot of very well-used nature subjects, still well done though. And just when I thought there were too many she would get me with something wonderful, like this which made me laugh with tears in my eyes:
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him! [Sonnet II]
Other favourites included 'Bluebeard', 'Interim', 'When the Year Grows Old'.
And 'Witch-Wife', the one with the line "She has more hair than she needs" is in this collection too. (It is very lovely.)
I really don't know why I haven't read Millay before, or about her interesting life; though when I last read a lot of poetry I was at school and the anthologies I tended to start from were always very British. -
This was my pick for the 2020 Reading Women Challenge #18: A Book Under 100 Pages
I feel like I'm a bit out of practice reading poetry, so not a lot stuck with me but what did was quite powerful. From this set I really enjoyed Witch-Wife, When the Year Grows Old, all the sonnets (especially Bluebeard). Definitely worth revisiting to engage with more, especially those particular titles.
Read via Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/109 -
The earliest poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Renascence: rebirth. In this poem about the freedom of the soul, Millay begins with a narrator who is measuring the limitations of his world and wishing for freedom. But when the restraints are lifted, the narrator wishes for death, and following death, for life again. Millay takes the reader through the experience of these changes, recognizing at last that limitations only exist within the person and can be overcome, even within the confines imposed by the outside world.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
Interim: A poem of grief and survival that struck at a part of my heart that I sometimes try to keep closed. It begins with the poet entering a room that contains a memory of the person lost, “The room is full of you!” and proceeds through the hopeless grief to a kind of faith in tomorrow, the burden of survival.
You are not here. I know that you are gone;
And will not ever enter here again.
And yet it seems to me, if I should speak,
Your silent step must wake across the hall;
And further on:
We were so wholly one I had not thought
That we could die apart. I had not thought
That I could move,--and you be stiff and still!
That I could speak,--and you perforce be dumb!
I believe anyone who has lost a very significant person, particularly a husband or a lover, to death, would understand and feel this poem in a very personal way. And, what is poetry, if not personal?
The Suicide: A sober look at suicide and the consequences on the soul as told from the point of view of the suicide himself.
God’s World: An acclamation of nature.
Afternoon on a Hill: Simple and effective. I quite love it:
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind blow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!
The remaining poems are at turns immature, ineffective, maudlin or sweet, but they all show the promise that at length became a great poet. -
Any book of poetry that makes me actually tear up on the bus while reading it deserves five stars. I was startled to find out Millay was in her early 20s when she wrote most of the poems in this book--"Time does not bring relief, you all have lied" doesn't seem the work of a young woman, but that's the mark of a great poet, after all.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him! -
How did I not read this earlier in my life?! She captures pain, grief, and sorrow without being overly melodramatic and also gives glimpses of the light and hope as the pain of loss integrates into a person's being. She does not pretend that the pain goes away - or even that it subsides - just that it becomes part of one and is acceptable. Awesome, awesome poetry! Totally going to recommend this to the teens at our library. :D
-
A few months ago, I was reading a book that happened to mention the work of Edna St. Vincent Millay. I honestly couldn't tell you what the book was. In any case, it made me curious about reading this poet that I was mostly unfamiliar with. I just wish I had learned about her sooner.
Edna St. Vincent Millay captures both sorrow and elation to absolute perfection. Each verse reads aloud perfectly, and I was genuinely disappointed that I had to finish it silently due to a change of venue (disappointed that I couldn't read it aloud, not disappointed in the poetry). When I pick up a book of classic poetry, this is what I hope for, and I so rarely get it. This is everything I could have wanted.
I may be new to her poetry, but I intend to change my level of familiarity. I look forward to reading more from her. I definitely recommend it to anyone in need of a poetry collection to read. -
finally some good fucking poetry
-
Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatched roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who’s six feet under ground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave is such a quiet place.
The rain, I said, is kind to come
And speak to me in my new home.
I wish I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine
Of every slanting silver line,
To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon the shower will be done,
And then the broad face of the sun
Will laugh about the rain-soaked earth
Unit the world with answering mirth
Shakes joyous, and each round drop
Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.
How can I bear it; buried here?
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm,
O, Multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn gold,
That I shall never more behold!
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred away from you!
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud’s gigantic gourd
And let the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!
Excerpt from Renascence -
I am not really drawn to poetry and so I might not have ever discovered Edna St. Vincent Millay. For book club this month we were to come with a poem. This, combined with a review I read about her poem "Renascence" gave me the desire to give this book a try. It was really good! Millay's poem "Renascence" was inspiring. Her other longer poems had a lot of depth to them as well.
Unlike fiction, I feel like you really get to know the author in poetry. Millay LOVES nature. She feels things deeply and she seems religious. The poem about loosing a child made me sure she went through that horrible tragedy but in my research I couldn't find anything about her having children.
This was a good read. I would recommend this to poetry and non-poetry lovers alike. -
Edna St. Vincent Millay Biography
Analysis of the sonnet
Time Does Not Bring Relief, which is one of the "other poems" in this volume.
The poem Recuerdo isn't included in this collection, but
this is a recording of Edna St. Vincent Millay reading it. I think hearing the poet read their own work gives a much richer appreciation of it. -
If you had known there was so little time
You would have dropped your pen and come to me
Edna is a genius and every poem in this collection is striking, but I cannot read "Interim" without crying. -
Nature, after life, letting go, death. Her poems intermingled these four main themes. These four too represent the strongest emotions. Nature could be after life, could be death and it all tied up with the heartbreaking of learning how to let go.
-
What a beautiful poetry.
-
”this now is yours. i seek another place.”
why did i wait so long to start reading poetry?
rating: 4/5 stars -
These poems are disarming, immediate, and expansive. I’ve read most of Millay’s short poems at some point or another but not in an early collection like this and not many of her lyrical poems. “Interim” was a new gem of hers for me and left me in tears when I meant to just read a few quick pages before bed.
-
Beautiful
-
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
-
I would I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine
Of every slanting silver line,
-
And the big rain in one black wave
Fell from the sky and struck my grave.
I know not how such things can be;
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
-
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, –
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat – the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.
-
The room is full of you! – As I came in
And closed the door behind me, all at once
A something in the air, intangible,
Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick!
-
You are not here. I know that you are gone,
And will not ever enter here again.
And yet it seems to me, if I should speak,
Your silent step must wake across the hall;
If I should turn my head, that your sweet eyes
-
Face to the table, – I cannot believe
That you are gone! – Just then it seemed to me
You must be here. I almost laughed to think
How like reality the dream had been;
-
You left until to-morrow? – O my love,
The things that withered, – and you came not back!
That day you filled this circle of my arms
That now is empty. (O my empty life!)
-
(You were the fairest thing God ever made, I think.)
And then your hands above my heart
-
“I had you and I have you now no more.”
-
How easily could God, if He so willed,
Set back the world a little turn or two!
Correct its griefs, and bring its joys again!
We were so wholly one I had not thought
That we could die apart. I had not thought
That I could move, – and you be stiff and still!
That I could speak, – and you perforce be dumb!
I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woof
In some firm fabric, woven in and out;
-
Fine pattern is destroyed; part of your heart
Aches in my breast; part of my heart lies chilled
In the damp earth with you. I have been torn
In two, and suffer for the rest of me.
What is my life to me? And what am I
To life, – a ship whose star has guttered out?
-
Are all the jabbering birds and foolish flowers
That clutter up the world? You were my song!
-
I cannot call you back; and I desire
-
I know not where you are, I do not know
If Heaven hold you or if earth transmute,
Body and soul, you into earth again;
-
It is too much – I am but flesh and blood,
And I must sleep. Though you were dead again,
I am but flesh and blood and I must sleep.
-
Lonely I came, and I depart alone,
And know not where nor unto whom I go;
But that thou canst not follow me I know.”
-
Ah, days of joy that followed! All alone
I wandered through the house. My own, my own,
My own to touch, my own to taste and smell,
All I had lacked so long and loved so well!
None shook me out of sleep, nor hushed my song,
Nor called me in from the sunlight all day long.
-
And all thy days this word shall hold the same:
No pleasure shalt thou lack that thou shalt name.
-
Sorrow like a ceaseless rain
Beats upon my heart.
People twist and scream in pain, –
Dawn will find them still again;
This has neither wax nor wane,
Neither stop nor start.
-
She smiled and smiled – there was no hint
Of sadness in her face.
-
Swung in the wind, – and no wind blowing! –
I was afraid, and turned to you,
Put out my hand to you for comfort, –
And you were gone! Cold, cold as dew,
Under my hand the moonlight lay!
Love, if you laugh I shall not care,
But if I weep it will not matter, –
Ah, it is good to feel you there!
-
She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.
-
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!
-
If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again –
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
I should not cry aloud – I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place
-
Oh, I am grown so free from care
Since my heart broke!
I set my throat against the air,
I laugh at simple folk!
-
Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger’s rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you – think not but I would! –
-
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
-
“Speak!” I said, “Oh, tell me something!
Make a sign that I can see!
For a keepsake! To keep always!
Quick! – before God misses me!”
And I listened for a voice; –
But my heart was all I heard;
Not a screech-owl, not a loon,
Not a tree-toad said a word.
-
This my personal death? –
That my lungs be failing
To inhale the breath
Others are exhaling?
This my subtle spirit’s end? –
Ah, when the thawed winter splashes
Over these chance dust and ashes,
Weep not me, my friend!
-
My heart is what it was before,
A house where people come and go;
But it is winter with your love,
The sashes are beset with snow.
I know a winter when it comes:
The leaves are listless on the boughs;
I watched your love a little while,
And brought my plants into the house.
-
I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.
-
It’s hard to tell. You see, I am always wanting
A little more than what I have, – or else
A little less. There’s something wrong.
-
“I love Humanity; but I hate people.”
-
“Sir, I am tired of waiting. I will wait No longer.” -
Just banger after banger after banger! Nothing but hits in this collection. Renascence and Interim and The Suicide! It just doesn’t get better than this set.
“Ah, I am worn out—I am wearied out—
It is too much—I am but flesh and blood,
And I must sleep. Though you we’re dead again,
I am but flesh and blood and I must sleep.” -
2017: I've been teaching Millay to Podling 1 this week. It was time to revisit this.
I was in a Millay Mood yesterday and thus pulled this slim volume out and read it cover-to-cover. The only problem is that it's a copy I marked up when I was about 21, and the notes I took are fairly cringe-worthy. Oh, youthful Ruth. You have so much to learn. -
Edna St. Vincent Millay has a truly wonderful way with words!
My favourites include Renascence, Sorrow, Ashes of Life, The Dream and of course the poem which introduced me to her, Afternoon on a Hill!
A wonderful collection of poetry! -
Absolutely marvelous and beautiful poetry. Of the soul-bathing variety.
-
Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatchèd roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who’s six feet under ground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave is such a quiet place.
Some poems in this small collection were better than others, but at her best, Millay's poetry is divine. Rigid in form, a few of the poems were a little cliche, many others were novel and refreshing.
Her unconventionally romantic Sonnet I reminded me of a Sonnet of Shakespeare, it was as if she was paying homage to the bard.
ESV Millay: Sonnet I
Thou art not lovelier than lilacs, -no,
Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair
Than small white single poppies,—I can bear
Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though
From left to right, not knowing where to go,
I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there
Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear
So has it been with mist,—with moonlight so.
W Shakespeare: Sonnet 130
"My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;"
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare. -
I thought I'd close 2018 in a peaceful, cozy way with 24-year-old Millay's first collection. Wrong! The 15-page title poem is about someone who suffers, dies, and rises from the dead, which I somehow just now realized is a Christ allegory. Written when Millay was 19, it won fourth prize in a nationwide poetry contest. Many, including the top two winners, thought it should have won, and a huge scandal ensued. (Oh, for the days of poetry scandals!) The next two poems, also long, are about the death of a lover ("Interim") and a suicide who is condemned to hell ("Suicide"). The rest are less grim, but few are memorable. Louis Untermeyer, writing in The Dial at the time, said that going to Vassar had destroyed the spontaneity of Millay's verse, and he criticized later poems like "Interim." That was my favorite, though, with its focus on the little details surrounding the death of a loved one: "That book, outspread, just as you laid it down!/Perhaps you thought, 'I wonder what comes next,/And whether this or this will be the end';/So rose, and left it, thinking to return."
