Collected Lyrics by Vincent Millay

Collected Lyrics Reviews

• 
  Theo Logos

  I first encountered Edna St. Vincent Millay when I discovered her poem Dirge Without Music in a high school literature text. I was only fifteen, and it was love at first read.
  
  A few years later I found this old, paperback volume of her poems at a used bookstore near campus. I was bewitched by the amazing poems within. First Fig, Second Fig, Witch Wife, Modern Declaration, and of course, Dirge Without Music — all of these poems (and many others) thoroughly captured my young imagination. I read them alone. I read them to friends. I read and quoted them to seduce lovers. They became an essential part of the furniture of my imagination.
  
  I now have in my library a fine, hardback copy of Collected Poems, the definitive collection of Millay’s work compiled by her sister shortly after she died, but this ancient, tattered paperback, my first Millay collection, continues to have a place of honor on my shelves and in my heart.
• 
  Amanda

  I loved many of the poems in here. Some of the recurring themes were death, grief, divine nature, love and heartbreak. I really enjoyed the longer narrative poems, which surprised me. Millay is definitely one of my favorite poets.
• 
  Olivia

  Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side
  All through the dragging day, -- sharp underfoot
  And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs --
  But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach,
  And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling,
  The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake,
  Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road;
  A gateless garden, and an open path;
  My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.
• 
  Dan

  I pursued Edna St. Vincent Millay after reading John McWhorter's "Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music." He cited her as the poet of careful craft, an exemplary poet of pre-beat twentieth century America. And indeed, his promotion did not let me down. There were many poems I didn't care for in the volume, some too loose, some too political. The good ones were amazing, though, very carefully constructed, conscious of meter and rhyme. Many meditations on life, love, death, the mountains, and the sea that I would like to memorize. It's refreshing to read formal poetry, to escape rampant free verse for a while.
• 
  Judith

  Millay won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1923, and when she published one of her collections, "Huntsman, What Quarry " it made the bestseller list. Can you imagine a book of poetry on the bestseller list today? I have always loved her poetry and it was fun to reread the old favorites and discover some new ones. It's funny to remember how romantic I thought these poems were when I was young, but they're still beautiful.
  
  "My candle burns at both ends;
  It will not last the night;
  But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-
  It gives a lovely light!"
  
  
• 
  India

  I'd give this book a 3.5.
  Edna St. Vincent Millay has this sort of depression and melancholy that I really relate to.
  Some of the poems were so beautiful and I loved the way she strung some sentences together. Others were a little harder to get through and it took me a little while to get the hang of the flow of her writing. All in all, I enjoyed this read.
• 
  Cami

  It seems like I've had this book forever.
  Ms. Millay's poems are vibrant and sad. She writes about a variety of subjects.
  Small example from a poem called The Musician:
  
  "There, today, as in the days when I knew you well,
  The willow sheds upon the stream its narrow leaves,
  And the quiet flowing of the water and its faint smell
  Are balm to the heart that grieves.
  
  Together with the sharp discomfort of loving you,
  Ineffable you, so lovely and so aloof,
  There is laid upon the spirit the calmness of the river view:
  Together they fall, the pain and it's reproof."
  
  Seek her out and enjoy! The Ballad of the Harpweaver is my favorite of her poems, pg. 128
• 
  Marie Kos

  I inherited a beautiful hardbound edition of this collection from my grandmother. It was wonderful to read Edna St Vincent Millay's work for the first time through a familial connection. I cannot say that Millay always impresses me... sometimes, her poetry rings a little too simple in structure for me to feel that she's really paying attention to form all that much. I think she is best at long-form poetry, where her cadence rings like a bell throughout a long train of thought. These are the moments when her talent really shines.
  
  Overall, a classic and recommended for any great fan of poetry.
• 
  Samantha

  Would have given it 4 stars if not for “To S.M.” That poem is breathtaking. She was incredible!
• 
  Chris

  I don’t know…Is Millay’s poetry old-fashioned? cloying? passé?
  I like it.
  Perhaps I’ve had this book since 1984, never reading more than a few cherished poems: “Czecho-Slovakia” (hyphenating the country well before its post-communist incarnation that held such a tenuous compatibility and eventual “velvet divorce”.) A poem that, while addressing the machinations of one would-be dictator, survives to call out later “strongmen” like Putin (in Crimea, and then, again, in Ukraine). First Fig and Second Fig, and Midnight Oil, which with their aphoristic brevity, were inspirational to a young man.
  I enjoy Millay’s “story poems”, The Concert, The Ballad of The Harp-Weaver, Huntsman, What Quarry?, and Short Story.
  The poem, Wild Swans put me in mind another favorite poem by Mary Oliver, Wild Geese. I’ve read elsewhere that Oliver has some admiration for Millay, so perhaps my connecting the two is not coincidental.
  What I found in my closer reading of this volume is Millay’s excellent crafting of meter, music, and rhyme, and her powerful expression of—call it, feminism—a personal expression of her own autonomy and emotion.
  Other Favorites: Apostrophe to Man, Conscientious Objector, Thursday, Renascence, Lines for a Grave-Stone, The Plum Gatherer.
• 
  Jenny

  I find it much easier to discuss poetry that's either remarkable (captures the both imagination and emotion) or terrible. But the in-between--the poetry that is well-written and lovely, but doesn't grab you by the shoulders and shake you--is a lot harder to talk about. And that's where this collection of Edna St. Vincent Millay falls for me. She's clearly talented, but few of the poems stirred a real response. I wonder if I would have loved them more in a different season--they're certainly worth a second attempt.
• 
  christina

  Not my style.
  
  St Vincent Millay is definitely precise and her sing-songy poems are light but without substance. Attempts at something deeper than an obvious statement was haphazard and lost sight of itself, jarred more by the its want of effulgence than to penetrate any depth.
• 
  Angeline Walsh

  People saying her prose is too depressing clearly have not read Baudelaire.
• 
  Brook White

  I wholeheartedly enjoyed every piece in this collection and I wish more people were reading Edna St. Vincent Millay’s work — truly such a great poet.
• 
  Betsy

  I love most of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry as it is very descriptive, the compilation felt a bit disjointed. I think I would prefer to read one collection of her poems as a whole.
• 
  Liz

  My absolute favorite poet. This collection is great to flip through or sit down and properly read--and it has the great feature of an index by first line.
  
  My favorite is Witch-Wife, and you may remember "Recuerdo" and "Macdougal Street" from the NYC subway's "Poetry in Motion" series, back at the beginning when the poems were better. Her most famous, I think, are her shortest and her longest: "First Fig" and "Second Fig" on the short end and "Renascence" on the long end.
  
  Millay was also the first woman to ever win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, if that kind of thing interests you. She was also known for her open marriage and bisexual bohemianism, if THAT kind of thing interests you.
• 
  Sara

  Some of Millay's poems are very, very good. In loose poems, the near rhymes and tricky rhyme patterns are bliss. In structured ones, she keeps the rhyme very well without losing too much.
  A few poems aren't. Her short poems are better than long; her loose poems better than her structured.
  While the imagery is very good, these poems are much more emotion than imagery. A few poems ("Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies") combine the two in genius.
  Millay was more "traditional" than those in her time, but she's just as good in her own way.
• 
  Drew

  I'm guessing every morning, Edna St. Vincent Millay awoke and asked herself, "What's the most depressing thing I can write about today?" Some days it was self-destruction ("The Suicide"). Some days it was poverty ("The Ballad of the Harp Weaver"). Still other days it was death ("Renascence") or war ("Three Sonnets in Tetrameter") or injustice ("Justice Denied In Massachusetts"). On good days, she wrote about nature. Yes, she can gush and wax and sound every bit the poetess but this collection contains many verses worth your while.
• 
  Lucy

  The True Encounter
  
  "Wolf!" cried my cunning heart
  At every sheep it spied,
  And roused the countryside.
  
  "Wolf! Wolf!"--and up would start
  Good neighbors, bringing spade
  And pitchfork to my aid.
  
  At length my cry was known:
  Therein lay my release.
  I met the wolf alone
  And was devoured in peace.
• 
  Jenniffer

  At one point the best selling modern american poet, this great writer has fallen off the radar. She has been neglected for adherance to trdational poetic forms, though her subject matter was topical and often controversial. She wrote about free love and against war and did little to hide her bisexuality in the 1920s! Well worht a read if you have any love of poetry or feminist literature.
• 
  jeremy

  the anguish
  
  i would to god i were quenched and fed
  as in my youth
  from the flask of song, and the good bread
  of beauty richer than truth.
  
  the anguish of the world is on my tongue.
  my bowl is filled to the brim with it; there is more than i can eat.
  happy are the toothless old and the toothless young,
  that cannot rend this meat.
• 
  Amanda Werlein

  Before reading this book, I only liked a few poems that I had found in life, all by various authors. This was the first book that showed me that poetry is a delight to read. I've read this cover to cover, probably about twice, but I've read some parts of it over twenty times. I would suggest this book to just about anyone who has even the slightest inclination to read poetry.
• 
  Maynard James Keller

  The book that ended up - many years later - making me a poet. Starts off with the seminal (if in need of editing down) Renascence written when she was an isolated 17 year old small town school girl in New England.
• 
  Valerie

  I have a 1959 copy.
• 
  Erika

  gift
• 
  Daniel

  crazy...