Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

A biographer's task is to serve as liaison between subject and reader, effect a connection between the two, and to this end she must go beyond the mere chronology of dates and events; after all, there is more to a life than the hyphen between two dates on a tombstone. In short, a good biography should end with the reader edifying, admiring, or perhaps even hating the subject. Thanks to Savage Beauty, Nancy Milford's wonderful biography of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, I was captivated by this extraordinary woman.Though in no way an attempt to diminish Milford's accomplishment, I have to say she had a wealth of sources from which to draw in the writing of Savage Beauty. Millay's sister Norma not only granted Milford total access to Millay's correspondence, notes, diaries, and journals, but also shared with the author her personal experiences with Edna, mother Cora, and youngest sister Kathleen. Milford does a masterful job splicing this mass of information together so that her biography reveals an eccentric but talented Millay family, mother Cora and three daughters, artists of sorts in their own right.Little wonder such a fascinating, talented woman would attract (her physical beauty no less a draw to men and women alike) or be drawn to equally interesting people. The Untermeyers, Jean and Louis, Amy Lowell, Sara Teasdale, the Benets, Stephen and William, and the artist Georgia O'Keefe were among those in her circle of friends and acquaintances. Milford's sensitive portrayal of Millay's husband, Eugen Boissevain, I found compelling. Ms. Milford's Boissevain comes across as a nearly perfect man and husband. Amanuensis, businessman, nurse, friend and lover...Eugen was all of these. Devoted to Edna to the point of uxoriousness, Eugen not only tolerated Vincent's frequent love affairs but in the case of the young poet George Dillon, even befriended his younger "rival." Eugen's keen awareness of Vincent's eminence as an artist led him to conduct his marriage in such a way so as to allow Millay the freedom to keep her artistic juices flowing. Because of Eugen's deep commitment to and recognition of Vincent's importance as a poet, I found Boissevain to be nearly as fascinating a character as his Bohemian wife.Edna St. Vincent Millay's frenetic ride to literary fame began with her poem "Renascence," her ticket first to Vassar and then quick ascent to celebrity status. As a poet she was a prolific talent. In addition to being a gifted speaker (crowds thronged to hear her read her works) and musician (Millay wrote the libretto for "The King's Henchman," her opera in three acts), Vincent was a staunch supporter of women's rights, a pro-war activist during WWII, and a critic whose opinions were much sought after by the Guggenheim Foundation (among those for whom she championed a grant, the poet e.e. cummings, although not without some reservation). In 1938 Vincent was recognized as being one of the ten most influential women in America. Above all, Millay remained poetry's steadfast advocate, believed fervently in its value and power.When I think of Millay's life, I'm reminded of the poem "Sadie and Maud" by Gwendolyn Brooks. The title characters, two sisters, live two very different lives. Maud lives alone, "a thin, brown mouse," while Sadie "lived life with a fine toothed comb." Brooks' Sadie echoes Millay's life as expressed in her early poem "First Fig": "My candle burns at both ends;/it will not last the night;...." Vincent's life was a flare: alcohol abuse, drug addiction (opiates for pain, the result of an automobile accident), and cigarettes (in Milford's generous photo sections, Millay is seldom without one).In her Prologue to Savage Beauty Milford quotes the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy: "...there are only two great things in America, skyscrapers and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay." Edna St. Vincent Millay's brilliant life flamed out at a young age. Nancy Milford's biography is a fitting, well-written tribute to a truly exceptional poet and human being, "...that creature," she declares, "for whom there is no name, the American Eve, dead at fifty-eight."

Those who admire Millay's poetry would do best to content themselves with the challenges of the works themselves and leave this biography alone. It is a case of an abundance of primary source material adding up to much less than the sum of its parts. Somewhere between 50-70% of the book is quotations -- many long and repetitive -- of letters, diaries, notebooks, interview responses, whole poems, etcetera. The author is preoccupied with finding a way of joining up this monumental architecture, with flying buttresses of metaphor and stockades of text breaks, and the task finally is overwhelming. Millay's life, as a continuity of events (as opposed to a montage of commentaries) only occasionally flows to us, the reader. Unfortunately, I would say, one of those few occasions is in the final chapters, when, with depressing inevitability, we witness the descent into addiction and failing powers.Students of this subject are provided with an abundance of valuable raw material for future PhDs, thanks to Milford's impressive research and access to Millay's papers. The apparent pay-off for this access -- giving Edna's sister Norma an "acting part" in the book's narrative -- I found to be more a distraction than an advantage. To make the case she wants for Millay, as the Lyric Voice of the Jazz Age, she needed to stay within the historical period and give us a richer context; instead, we are constantly roused from the past into the present, only to be quickly sent, sleepy eyed and bewildered, back there again.The unusual structure of this biography, of course, was not an accident. Some readers may regard it as superior to more conventional biographies strewn with spurious certitudes, based on guesswork, and frequent purple patches of historical backgrounding in lieu of biographical evidence. Milford chooses the words of others over her own, in large part, and that should not be treated too harshly. Where this biography falls short, for me, is not only in its structural awkwardness, but in its judgements. Milford has surprisingly little to offer by way of discernment and analysis of Millay's poetry. Almost everything is uniformly wonderful, splendid. For instance (p181) she bestows the laurel of "great" on a sonnet ("Pity me not because of the light of day") that, to me, seems trite and derivative. Millay did much better work, but how are we to evaluate what makes those poems worthwhile if this rather self-pitying, immature effort is held aloft with them? Am I caught up in a pointless contest of subjectivities? I wonder, when I read a description of a photograph of Millay in which, to me, she looks dowdy and prematurely aged, but to Milford appears "ripe, voluptuous"? No, I decide, it is not merely subjectivity but a more complete parting of the ways, on reading this (p333): "Edna St. Vincent Millay...told [her] generation what to say about how they felt..." Told? How they felt? Nothing about the life revealed in his biography suggests to me that Millay would have greeted such a pretentious claim with anything other than howls of derision.

I've always wanted to find out more about her. This biography is well written and keeps you interested. It's a great buy for anyone who wants to know about Millay.

Her early life was not easy - living in what would now be thought of as poverty in a house devoid of most comforts, minus a feckless father who was thrown out when she was young, and for much of the time being alone with two young sisters while her mother was away earning money by nursing. Her poetic talents brought her to the notice of a wealthy benefactress, who saw her through three years at Vassar, after which, with some reputation as a poet, she began to live her own rather chaotic life. She was not particularly beautiful, but something about her attracted and enslaved both men and women. She was selfish, hedonistic, bisexual and addictive, and drank so much as to induce cirrhosis of the liver in her last years. Essentially, she had a lot of fun, living a high life she couldn't really afford in various parts of the world. She married Eugene Boissevant, a fairly affluent businessman, who tolerated her various affairs, even being friends with her lovers, and effectively devoted himself entirely to looking after her and her career.The middle part of her life consisted of her growing reputation as a poet and the gay social world in which she lived. After about 40, her health began to decline and her inspiration to fail, and her last few years make grim reading. Eugene died rapidly of lung cancer, and after living alone for about a year, she fell downstairs, probably drunk, and was found dead.She had an almost passionate relationship with her mother, who showed literary gifts of her own, a largely difficult relationship with her sisters, and fortunately a good understanding with her publisher, who was prepared to help her financially in her later years when money became a problem.This review does poor justice to a gripping, detailed, greatly researched and wonderfully written book, and skims over much of Millay's life. It gave me great pleasure to read. I recommend it strongly.

'Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St Vincent Millay,' by Nancy Milford is a wonderful biography. It follows the life of one of America's greatest twentieth century poets from the childhood of her mother, who was also a fascinating woman, to Edna's death in 1950. Milford allows the reader to get to know Edna, or Vincent as she was known to those close to her, gradually; as one does a person in real life. She writes almost like an observer, adding very little of her own opinions, allowing the reader to form her/his own feelings about Edna as a person and as a poet. Many of her poems are included in the book and the photographs of Edna, her family and others, who were significant in her life, are beautiful.Edna was a complex character. Secure in her great talent, but so very insecure in most other areas of her life. Her difficult childhood, her time at Vassar, her relationships with family, friends and lovers and her difficulties later in life make for a life story that is completely irrestible to people who enjoy good biographical writing, whether one likes poetry or not.'Savage Beauty' is one of the best biographies I have read in years. I couldn't put it down, nor can I stop thinking about Edna and her strange life.

This is a good read, if you are a fan of Edna St Vincent Millais, OR Nancy Mitford. Very good purchase.

A thoroughly researched and sensitively written biography of a fascinating and gifted poet who would fit well into 2014! Her personal life was a storm of intensity and multiple affairs with men and women. Enlivening!