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    First Fig and Other Poems
    First Fig and Other Poems
    First Fig and Other Poems
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    First Fig and Other Poems

    By Edna St. Vincent Millay

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    From the bohemian outpost of Greenwich Village during the Jazz Age, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) sounded a clarion call for the impassioned youth of her generation. Her rare mixture of clever cynicism and wistful tenderness captivated readers, who reveled in the jubilant defiance of such poems as the title piece of this collection, "First Fig": "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!"
    Their brilliance undimmed by the passage of time, these gemlike verses continue to dazzle poetry lovers. This new anthology represents the quintessential Edna St. Vincent Millay, comprising 67 poems from two of her most popular works, A Few Figs from Thistles and Second April. Its contents include such well-known and much-studied poems as "Recuerdo" and "The Philosopher," along with an abundance of sonnets, a genre in which the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet excelled.
    The perfect introduction for those as yet unacquainted with one of the most distinctive voices of 20th-century poetry, this volume also offers a high-quality, inexpensive treasury of favorite Millay works for devotees of her verse.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateAug 28, 2012
    ISBN9780486158952
    First Fig and Other Poems
    Author

    Edna St. Vincent Millay

    Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in 1892 in Rockland, Maine, the eldest of three daughters, and was encouraged by her mother to develop her talents for music and poetry. Her long poem "Renascence" won critical attention in an anthology contest in 1912 and secured for her a patron who enabled her to go to Vassar College. After graduating in 1917 she lived in Greenwich Village in New York for a few years, acting, writing satirical pieces for journals (usually under a pseudonym), and continuing to work at her poetry. She traveled in Europe throughout 1921-22 as a "foreign correspondent" for Vanity Fair. Her collection A Few Figs from Thistles (1920) gained her a reputation for hedonistic wit and cynicism, but her other collections (including the earlier Renascence and Other Poems [1917]) are without exception more seriously passionate or reflective. In 1923 she married Eugene Boissevain and -- after further travel -- embarked on a series of reading tours which helped to consolidate her nationwide renown. From 1925 onwards she lived at Steepletop, a farmstead in Austerlitz, New York, where her husband protected her from all responsibilities except her creative work. Often involved in feminist or political causes (including the Sacco-Vanzetti case of 1927), she turned to writing anti-fascist propaganda poetry in 1940 and further damaged a reputation already in decline. In her last years of her life she became more withdrawn and isolated, and her health, which had never been robust, became increasingly poor. She died in 1950.

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      Book preview

      First Fig and Other Poems - Edna St. Vincent Millay

      e9780486158952_cover.jpge9780486158952_i0001.jpge9780486158952_i0002.jpg

      At Dover Publications we’re committed to producing books in an earth-friendly manner and to helping our customers make greener choices.

      Manufacturing books in the United States ensures compliance with strict environmental laws and eliminates the need for international freight shipping, a major contributor to global air pollution. And printing on recycled paper helps minimize our consumption of trees, water and fossil fuels.

      The text and cover of this book were printed on paper made with post-consumer waste. At Dover, we use Environmental Defense’s Paper Calculator to measure the benefits of these choices, including: the number of trees saved, gallons of water conserved, as well as air emissions and solid waste eliminated.

      Courier Corporation, the manufacturer of this book, owns the Green Edition Trademark.

      Please visit the product page for this book at www.doverpublications.com to see a detailed account of the environmental savings we’ve achieved over the life of this book.

      DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

      GENERAL EDITOR: PAUL NEGRI

      EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: JOSLYN T. PINE

      Copyright

      Note copyright © 2000 by Dover Publications, Inc.

      All rights reserved.

      Bibliographical Note

      This Dover edition, first published in 2000, is an unabridged republication of the following two volumes: A Few Figs from Thistles: Poems and Sonnets, originally published by Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, 1922; and Second April, originally published by Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, 1921. A new introductory Note has been specially prepared for this edition.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 1892–1950.

      First fig and other poems / Edna St. Vincent Millay.

      p. cm.—(Dover thrift editions)

      9780486158952

      I. Title. II. Series.

      PS3525.1495 A6 2000

      811’.52–dc21

      99-053136

      Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

      41104402

      www.doverpublications.com

      Note

      ... an exile far out upon the world’s forsaken rim, her wild feet forever seeking Beauty.

      (Edna St. Vincent Millay as described by fellow poet and lifelong friend, Arthur Davison Ficke)

      EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (1892-1950), poet, playwright, feminist and humanist ranks among the greats in American poetry, despite the fact that her reputation during the last half of the century has been mostly in decline. Whatever current fashion literary circles mandate, most serious critics from her time and beyond generally agree that she is America’s best practitioner of the sonnet form; and at the height of her fame and popularity, she was considered America’s finest living lyric poet. While the American literati could be fickle in their evaluations of her poetry, at least two of her British contemporaries were unequivocal in their admiration for her work: her idol, A. E. Housman, and Thomas Hardy, who stated that the two great contributions America made to the twenties were its architectural innovations and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

      A native of the Maine seacoast, and the eldest of three sisters, Millay was nurtured in the arts by a doting mother,¹ Cora Buzzelle Millay, who schooled her precocious daughter in the traditional forms of poetry. In fact, it was remarked by one of Millay’s lifelong friends, Floyd Dell—a fellow Provincetown Player from her Greenwich Village days—that her mother put more emphasis on her respecting the conventions of art than the conventions of behavior. Telling words, especially considering that not only would Millay come to epitomize the free-spirited woman of the twenties, but also because her critics would later devalue her poetry for bypassing the modernist bandwagon. Instead, Millay adhered unwaveringly to conventional forms throughout her distinguished career as a poet. She composed her first poem at the age of five; it consisted of three rhymed couplets on the theme of One Bird. Her first published poem, Forest Trees, appeared in St. Nicholas magazine when Millay was only fourteen. This extraordinary magazine for children, an inspiration to many budding American poets and writers, would later publish several more of her poems,

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