Tiresome heart, forever living and dying

[lotesse]

It's Edna St. Vincent Millay's birthday today. Reading her makes me remember why I do this is the first place - I've been feeling worn down of late, doubting the reasons for my work with literature, doubting that I'm doing anything useful at all, and I've had some pretty big academic disappointments in the past couple of days. But when I read Millay it all makes sense, and most of it stops mattering, because her poems are beautiful and that's really all the meaning I need. So happy birthday, Vincent, and thank you.

Witch-Wife

She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.

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.

Comments

[lotesse]

I have. I actually just had a conversation with my gran about it - she found the bio and we were talking about Millay. She was a schoolgirl when Millay died, and she and her girlfriends wore flowers in her memory and cried over it for weeks. I found Millay independently, as a young teenager, and only realized a few years ago that my gran had loved her poetry all her life.

Though I'm not really that surprised, because gran and I have the exact same taste, and most of my geeks are her fault. She introduced me to Narnia when I was three, and I've never been the same since :)

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

Most of what I've read so far are Millay's sonnets; I keep meaning to branch out into her other writing. I love how it's shown that poets as recent as her were known by many people while she lived and wrote, not just literary students.

I sometimes wish that I could be like Millay. Not to have her health problems or personal relationships, but to have that spark that makes living life to spectacular.

[lotesse]

God, read everything. If you click my poetry tag, I've posted two of her most magnificent on this journal before: Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies, and Apostrophe on the Race of Man. Go read them right now, seriously. Childhood especially is mind-blowing.

I love Millay so so so so much.