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Indeed, though she favored traditional poetic forms like lyrics and sonnets, she boldly reversed conventional gender roles in poetry, empowering the female lover instead of the male suitor, and set a new, shocking precedent by acknowledging female sexuality as a viable literary subject.” “For the disillusioned post-war youth who considered her their spokesperson for women’s rights and social equality, Millay represented the rebellious spirit of their generation. An essay by Holly Peppe, Millay’s literary executor, encapsulated her appeal: Throughout the 1920s, she recited to enthusiastic, sold-out crowds during her many reading tours at home and abroad. Vincent Millay achieved the status of superstar status, something that was - and still is - rare for a poet. She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer, and only the second person to receive the prize for poetry.Įdna St.

In 1923, Millay’s fourth volume of poems, The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver, won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Second April (also 1921) dealt with heartbreak, nature, and death.

Still, the poem garnered her a great deal of attention, launched her writing career, and led to a full scholarship to Vassar College.Ī Few Figs from Thistles(1921) explored female sexuality, among other themes. “Renascence” came in fourth and didn’t win the cash prizes offered to the top three entries, (which created quite a literary scandal).

It would publish winning entries in a book to be titled The Lyric Year. In 1912, encouraged by her mother, Vincent, then nineteen, entered her poem, “ Renascence” to a poetry magazine that was sponsoring a contest. Vincent, as her family and friends called her, was introduced by her mother to great works of literature from an early age, especially poetry by Shakespeare, Keats, Longfellow, Shelley, and Wordsworth.Īt age of sixteen she compiled a dozen or so poems into a copybook and presented them to her mother as The Poetical Works of Vincent Millay. Vincent Millay from some of her earlier collections. Here is a selection of 12 poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950) has long been regarded as a major twentieth-century figure in the genre of poetry.