Rapture and Melancholy: The Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay, edited by Millay biographer Daniel Mark Epstein, provides an occasion to revisit not just her improbable life but also her sometimes revelatory work. . . . While the diary entries vary widely in interest level, Epstein’s biographical summations are reliably fascinating and informative. . . . Hopefully the release of this complex woman’s diaries will draw readers’ attention to the complexity of her work, which offers much more than figs and ferries.”—Abigail Deutsch, Wall Street Journal“Seven decades after Millay’s death, Rapture and Melancholy paints a picture of artistic triumph, romantic tumult, and a daily life that descended into addiction.”—Heather Clark, New York Times Book Review“The Millay who emerges in these entries is not the famed poet, performer, and lover but another Millay, whose inner world helps situate the story of her life anew.”—Apoorva Tadepalli, The Nation“The poet’s account of her life is raw, intense and rich in detail, supplementing the poems with another kind of first-person voice.”—Lucy McDiarmid, Times Literary Supplement“The Millay we remember is forever lovely and lyrical . . . yet her diaries give us a fuller picture of the poet than we have ever seen.”—Sandra M. Gilbert, American Scholar“A candid self-portrait of the ‘bad girl of American letters.’ . . . Authoritative introductions contribute to the literary significance of the diaries.”—Kirkus Reviews“These diaries show us the young writer who was a sensitive, often forlorn, aspirant and the established poet at the apex of literary fame who achieved her wildest early fantasies.”—Declan Ryan, PoetryFoundation.org“Epstein assembles in this intimate collection the first publication of the diaries of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950). The entries, which cover 1907–1949, offer moving insights into the interior and domestic life of the Pulitzer winner. . . . Through it all, Millay comes across as full of life: energetic, intelligent, and vivacious.”—Publishers Weekly“For all her excesses and insecurities, her faults and bad decisions, there is still something admirable about Millay’s curiosity, her play in the klieg lights, her appetite for life. In 1912, Infinity and Eternity had beckoned, and the young Millay had followed.”—Maggie Doherty, New Yorker“Rapture and Melancholy, particularly in its first half, will also appeal to general readers interested in the unfiltered workings of a lively, complicated mind. The diaries reveal a writer both insecure and imperious, convivial and lonely, kind and cruel: brilliantly and wretchedly human.”—Carolyn Oliver, On the Seawall“Of interest both to academics who wish to explore the context behind Millay’s work and also to a wider readership hungry for intimate access to their favorite poet. Epstein’s edition fulfills expectations on both counts . . . [and] will undoubtedly provide an indispensable resource for Millay scholars, and Millay fans, for years to come.”—Sarah Parker, American Literary History“A book of surprising revelations and careful silences, these diaries constitute a remarkable portrait not only of a woman, an artist, and a citizen, but of the cultural life of her time.”— David Bergman, author of The Poetry of Disturbance“An essential work for the study of Millay, Daniel Mark Epstein’s brilliant edition of her diaries takes us with great knowledge and insight behind the scenes of her remarkably poetic, complex life.”—Jonathan Cohen, author of Muna Lee: A Pan-American Life“Endlessly intriguing and illuminating. The publication of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s diaries is a major literary event, providing astonishing insight into the great poet’s art and life.”—Chloe Honum, author of The Tulip-Flame“From her ‘tired and crushed and driven’ girlhood through days of gardening in the nude, Millay kept diaries that illuminate a gifted poet’s life and are a pleasure to read. Millay’s prejudices emerge as nakedly as the gardener herself, and the late entries about addiction are devastating. I’m still grateful for this book. It was hard for an ambitious woman to survive her own daring. We need to remember it.”—Lesley Wheeler, author of Poetry’s Possible Worlds
03/14/2022
Dramatist Epstein (The Loyal Son) assembles in this intimate collection the first publication of the diaries of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950). The entries, which cover 1907–1949, offer moving insights into the interior and domestic life of the Pulitzer winner. She wrote her breakthrough poem “Renascence” in 1912, and the diaries capture her reaction to the poem’s success (“Read it and get a life-long swell-head!” she writes about one review), as well as her life at Steepletop, her upstate New York farm, with her husband. Many of the entries are just one line long, but others offer rambling considerations: “Why on earth, pray tell, should I have dreamed last night of velvet... never before, it seems to me, did I dream of velvet.” Epstein’s excellent and concise introductions to the various eras of his subject’s life highlight that though Millay’s diaries coincide with her most mentally stable periods, they also offer a glimpse of a woman addicted to medical morphine and mired in alcoholism: “They are lovely here & give me all the morphine I want—ply me with morphine,” she wrote in 1927 while at Mount Sinai Hospital after an operation. Through it all, Millay comes across as full of life: energetic, intelligent, and vivacious. These entries are a pleasure to read. (Mar.)
2021-12-22
A candid self-portrait of the “bad girl of American letters.”
Biographer Epstein offers a judicious edition of the diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), beginning in 1907, when the ebullient teenager felt sometimes overwhelmed with caring for her two younger sisters whenever her mother, a nurse, was called away. “It is very hard to be sixteen,” she confides to her diary, glad to have an outlet for what she calls her “spite.” At 19, fantasizing about a “beloved,” she pours her passion into “Renascence,” which she entered into a poetry contest in May 1912. Accepted for a volume of the winners, “Renascence” was singled out for praise by several reviewers and served to launch Millay’s career. The Poetry Society of America hosted a literary evening in her honor in 1913, when she was a student at Barnard, preparing to enter college. For the 20-year-old poet, New York City was a heady experience, and her diary reflects the excitement of meeting other poets (Sara Teasdale, for one), shopping, walking through Manhattan, and seeing her first opera, Madame Butterfly, at the Metropolitan Opera House. After graduating from Vassar, she traveled to Europe, including Albania, which had just opened to Western tourism. Her vivid entries from that trip, Epstein notes, appear here for the first time. In 1923, Millay married the wealthy Dutch businessman Eugen Boissevain, widower of suffragist Inez Milholland, and soon the couple bought Steepletop, a house in Austerlitz, New York, where Millay lived for the rest of her life. Entries reveal her as impetuous, hardworking, and passionate; friends could irritate as much as please. A lover’s rejection sent her into a depression from which she never recovered. By 1949, when she made her last entry, she had become “a solitary, tragic figure,” suffering from ill health, addiction to alcohol and opiates, and loneliness.
Authoritative introductions contribute to the literary significance of the diaries.
