- Kudos to Ms Lines for wonderful readings! Great work from all! This short poem may encapsulate the quintessential E.St.V.M as well as any… “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 coloured 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. - Edna St. Vincent Millay
@@josephsf2452 having a reputation of using and abusing people is a horrible legacy to leave for your family. I believe that people who don't care about what others think, tend to have the lowest sense of morals. Sociopaths don't care about what others think. They don't have a moral compass and they're very dangerous.
I feel like she does but my boundaries are self imposed ,nothing more or less than the golden rule and I'm usually happy or at worst blah meeting her end is unnecessary
Ms. Millay was one of the first female poets I discovered as a young student in the 70s. Her words sparked a love of poetry writing in me. Thank you for uploading this documentary of her life.
Yes, her poems were a big part of my childhood and early college life. I would have detested her as a person (the way she talks about servants! Comparing them to pigs!) but she was an amazing poet.
@@patricias5122 I agree with you about her. A good poet, but a selfish, arrogant person. Often cruel, not considering how she hurt others or how others might feel. Really awful. Tragic.
My mother and grandmother were big fans of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry, but talked of their shock when they went to one of her readings and she came out onstage falling-down drunk. They owned every book she ever wrote, and read me some of what they called her "doggerel" when I was a child, such as: "Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand. Come and see my shining palace, built upon the sand." I grew up memorizing some of her best and most beautiful poems.
"What a life I had when back I should recall I was seen and heard for a time by all Such a rise somehow disguised what became my greatest fall The love I stole, the love I sought, brought me not the love for self Giving way to spiral and decay til but a shell upon a shelf - the very end of me ... And of you, should you fail to see, should you follow me" - LMC After hearing her sad story here, a long poem just fell out of my head. I shortened it to the above. Not EVM worthy, but still a truth I see.
What a lovely documentary. I was merely looking for a biographical piece to listen to while painting but was entranced. I am, perhaps her newest fan! The actress who read her poems was brilliant with just the right amount of archness to the words. Wonderful. Thank you.
Thank you so much for this remarkable documentary. It was such a pleasure to listen to all the participants. Mrs. Millay was surely a brilliant poetess but little she knew about how to threat people with respect. She had such a distorted sense of entitlement. It was all about her desires and needs. The way she spoke about her servants, the way she used and discarded people for hedonistic purposes... just awful and full of callousness. Some people pass through this world causing so much devastation... Her legacy was of great contribution to Literature. Besides that, she was illiterate in regard to empathy.
Would you be saying this about her behaviour if she were a man? Such judgement is always reserved for women when they are only expressing their desires with honesty. As well, many of her former lovers indeed stayed friends.
Thank you for this wonderful documentary. I too read her biography a few years back and thought what a phenomenal person. Of course, I was sad for the tragedies of her life but I love her poetry to this day. I think her time will come again.
I am a very well read 73 Years old man, Raised by Grandmother, who also never spoke of Edna St. Vincent Millay: well she passed away 1950, I was born 1949. She is another Wonderful Woman and I am very happy to learn _ in my Old Age.
@@michellelekas211 Luckily we're permitted to differ on poetic taste. I like her very much. And I think she's far superior to much of what passes for poetry today.
@@danhanqvist4237 that’s true, but there so few women, and she won a Pulitzer Prize. She should at least be covered in English and American literature classes. When my son went to college he was disgusted that almost no American writers at all were discussed, just ones from the UK.
Well at least God loved her. As biblical quotes are scattered among the comments perhaps the quotes saying (1) we are to love everyone, and (2) we are not to judge, would be most appropriate.
Her personal life was such an enigma to a mind like mine, so scattered and unsettled, that her poetry has an almost savant explanation. It's really astonishing she survived as long as she did once the addictions got such a powerful hold on her. I'd like to hear a qualified psychologist or psychiatrist offer up some explanation for some of her extreme behavior. Why are so many wildly creative people so plagued by tragedy? Thanks for the great video!
Everyone's life is filled with tragedy, heartache, soul rending pain; some people find ways to cope, more or less successfully, while others eventually fall victim to life. The main difference, to address your question as to why creative people are plagued with tragedy, is that creative's mine their pain for art, and if successful, then we know of their pain and think it...what? Marvelous is not the word; perhaps fascinating, as a rearing cobra, it's hood spread and poised to strike, is fascinating. Go to a coffee shop, ride on public transit and discreetly eavesdrop on others conversation, and you will see that famous artists are not made different because of their tragedy, but because they found ways to deal with their pain in ways others founding interesting.
I would say she was nourished by the extreme passions that drove her. Literally her sustenance. Her fragile body had no choice but to continue surviving despite conditions that would be incompatible with life in anyone else. To be sure, she was a medical enigma. The tragedies surrounding her were only the collateral damage of allowing pure chaotic emotion to keep the heart beating. Emotions are always self-righteous and so fickle. The World is so fortunate that she had the gift of poetic expression. A glimpse into a madness that makes no sense yet will continue to deeply touch people as long as there is poetry. She didn't want to ever die. In a way, she never will.
i am so sad to hear that. Perhaps now you can remedy the disservice Your Teachers had done by allowing you to be ignorant of her work, by offering her Poetry to expand Your student's frame of reference... their minds & hearts?
Oh man I was disturbed by her view of her servants & treatment of them. It’s over shadowing my admiration for her talent & freedom. Maybe she had Asperger syndrome? That would at the least make me understand. Perhaps she is a narcissist.
I graduated from college 22 years and took a lot of poetry classes but I don’t remember her name coming up ever! What a brilliant brilliant writer that should be thought of with the great American poets!!
I remember taking a poetry class at the art college i was attending. We were told to buy a book "Americas 100 Best Poems " Or "Poets"- i cant remember- this was over 40 years ago . But i DO remember that there were only 2 women poets represented in the entire book. Neither one was Millay. Maybe thats how she came to be forgotten.
@@madelainepetrin1430 Sylvia Plath and i believe Elizabeth Bishop. Btw, the teacher of that class was co author of the book and a poet too. Very full of himself too i might add.
@dreams of turtles my professor was Cesar Blake, his last year teaching. I kept his anthology. Last night, I was reading Don Juan by Lord Byron, and I must say I found it very humorous. I was laughing out loud at some passages. Finally, the gender of the poet is irrelevant. What matters is the poem, the rhymes, and the emotions.
What I find most remarkable about this video are the sympathetic scholars who provide the commentary and the analysis of Millay's life and work. They are all to be commended. The insights of Nancy Milford and Elizabeth Barnett are both accurate and endearing, and one regrets not having the opportunity to visit with them. As for Millay as a poet, she was facile and technically gifted, but with a very narrow artistic vision. All of her poems are autobiographical examinations, even those that are not love poems. She was extremely self-absorbed and in passionate pursuit of experiences of all kinds, without regard to the consequences, as J.D. McClatchy points out. In this she was not unlike the other writers of her era -- Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Ezra Pound, et al -- who were all equally limited as artists and equally stunted as human beings. Millay was the voice of the feminists of the 1920s, just as Fitzgerald was the voice of the Jazz Age. And when the age passed, their limitations became apparent and their work no longer resonated with an audience that had moved on. All of them enjoyed the celebrity of the moment and outlived the fad. In Millay's case, she seemed incapable of expressing anything but her own feelings. Where are the larger ideas about life? About other people? Her contemporaries were not so limited. "Mending Wall" is not about Frost, "The Wasteland" is not about T.S. Eliot, "You, Andrew Marvel" is not about Archibald MacLeish. Those poems derive from the poet's experience, as they must, but they are about something more than the self. Millay, on the other hand, seems never to have been able to transcend herself, to see the world whole. Her own feelings were her sole theme, and also her weakness as a poet. Today, like Fitzgerald and Hemingway, her celebrity and her persona has become more important than her works.
I'm not sure I can agree with you in regard to Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and ... Ezra Pound, fer gawd's sake - "equally limited"?? .... (And Hemingway, whatever his limitations, was probably the most influential prose-stylist of the past century, in English at least, for better or for worse.) But "a very narrow artistic vision" is certainly an apt description of Millay's work, and comparison with her contemporaries such as Frost et al is telling.
A fine poet ; A sad ending . I really enjoyed the past hour and a half. This is quite a good documentary about a poet I've never been familiar with, but now I feel as if I had . I'm now, you could say, one of Edna Millay's fans .
Edna St. Vincent Millay February 22, 1892 - October 19, 1950 I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains,-but the best is lost. The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,- They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world. Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Other than knowing she was a poet, I didn’t know anything about her life. This was enlightening to say the least. She certainly was brilliant! Having said that, she was not a kind person. I believe the latter should be sought after so much more than the former.
Beautiful presentation...humorous, ironic, and serious moments interspersed perfectly. So natural, as she must have been. As a child required to scribble 4th grade poetry, I imitated her because I loved the lilt of her name ....I became a musician, and wrote many songs. The kinship is so close, although I regret that her art form failed to overcome her illness and addictions. Tragic loss.
I'm surprised at her meanness to the servants. Being rude to your servants is just plain dumb. They have so many ways of getting even. Serving spit soup is the least of them. lol She is my favorite poet, however, in spite of that terrible sin.
@@meman6964 I was going to say the opposite. It comes from insecurity. Those genuinely born into wealth and privilege have no need to be rude to those below them to demonstrate their superiority; on the contrary, they go out of their way to be magnanimous and gracious. Good breeding and all that. They're also prepared to put up with a certain amount of insolence, disrespect, laziness, bad behaviour, etc. from servants since that's all part of noblesse oblige. But those who have had to claw their way up from the bottom feel their position is precarious, so they look down on the lower class since they remind them of what they used to be. They sometimes put them down in order to reinforce the gap between them and their own recently-acquired tenuously-held higher status. That's been my observation. Similar to how nobody's nastier to women than other women. Familiarity breeds contempt whereas unfamiliarity breeds romsnticisation. People I know who've been brought up privileged and with no real experience of poverty or contact with the poor see them as poor oppressed helpless victims and are very lefty and concerned with 'social justice' and so on. But people like me who come from the lower middle class and who have been around plenty of poor people, been in their houses, etc. have very little sympathy for them since we know their poverty comes from their own poor habits and life choices. They choose to be the way they are, and I think they prefer it. In just the same way, nobody despises dole bludgers more than their next door neighbours working their backsides off on minimum wage.
@@TomorrowWeLive That may be true of some, but most certainly not all. The same for the statement that growing up poor will somehow make you magically kind to others.
@@TomorrowWeLive All of that just sounds like self hatred to me. Many who come from those environments still understand the challenges that lower income people face, and that their “bad choices” don’t exist in a vacuum.
I think the loss of her father leaving them and the struggles her mother had to raise them all, had a profound affect on her. I dont think she ever got over the abandonment and lack of his love.
Beautiful tribute to a very unique woman. So flawed and yet that was an intricate part of her larger than life passion. Thank you for uploading this documentary.
My dear Edna, you will never be forgotten!! Again, I am watching this documentary about Edna. As in my existence, I can understand her complicated life, her passions, her obsessions, and her addictions. I too agree she was possibly was probably a manic depressive. Although, I am not a doctor. A broken flower of unknown dimensions that still shines in hearts that don't judge. A life that is a life that flames with passion, joy, and tragedy. We all suffer do we not? The transformation we may be able to gain if we live long enough. Edna will always be one of America's great poets. Reverence ✨️ ❤️ Thank you for this documentary. .
What a joy to have seen this. So well done. Lovely readings, and information by all. Ms. Lines was delightful. The poem 'Memory of Cape Cod' by Ms. Millay was selected and read by Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg at Jacqueline Kennedy's funeral on 84th and Park in 1994, NYC. Thank you, for this time well spent!
I love her poem about spring - 'Is it enough that yearly down this hill April comes babbling like an idiot and strewing flowers?' Also, Leonard Bernstein puts to music one of her poems in his song-cycle 'Songfest'. (Also Walt Whitman.)
These documentaries are super, so well crafted. i just looked up Nancy Milford, she seems like such a good story teller/ raconteur. She passed away only a few weeks ago, the end of March. RiP Ms. Milford. I shall certainly be reading the biographies you have written.
That's too bad. I just read that Liz Barnett died a year or two after this was filmed and now her daughter is president of the Millay society. You can really feel the love they all have for Edna coming through.
Jessica Mitford was a handy writer too, there was a classic she wrote about the funeral industry in the US. A great writer can make any subject completely riveting! not sure whether Jessica still lives, she would be very elderly if so. The Mitford girls, the aristocratic counterpoint to the Brontes...
@@twistoffate4791 IT IS MITFORD and yes, Jessica was my favorite of the sisters but Nancy was a fabulous novelist and biographer (Millay, Zelda Fitzgerald). Jessica passed in 1996. Unity, Deborah, Pamela, Nancy, Jessica were the Mitford sisters.
This film I think was well informed, its share of details not the norm, Millay, more a student of self, still was brilliant, her works, a wealth, the way Ms. Edna wrote from life, must have given some relief from strife, every word a road once traveled, every book, an era unraveled. By Me
Her life isn’t so different from other writers of her generation like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The alcoholism, affairs, broken health, addiction, and early death. I was such a fan of hers back in the 60s.
They have proven that people with red hair need more medication to have an effect, also with premature babies as well. Maybe that is why she took so many drugs to get the same relief from pain as anyone else would.
Yes!!!! I’ve only had 2 doctors that knew this. I carry the studies with me. It’s terrifying. I have/had to get multiple surgeries for spinal issues and then a horrible car accident. I give my dentist credit for knowing. Thank you for bringing this up.
I honestly don’t understand people’s acceptance to those who treat other humans with disdain! Treating the poor with respect gives honor to our creator!
Those who judge reveal themselves. I have treasured her work at many points of life and shared her with friends, and later my daughter. I appreciate this story and will add it to other bits of her story.
A very sympathetic and comprehensive study. She appears to be the classic narcissist: vain, cruel, transactional and not terribly deep. Her poetry is fun, sometimes trite, often cruel and spoiled. She used people mercilessly and forgot the charm when dealing with servants who she despised. An utter horror! A butterfly made of cold steel decked in velvet. I enjoyed the story but hated the way she treated people, beginning to wish she could only Fall in Love, fall and experience the deep feelings she’d inspired in innocent others. So against my character I was not sad when she finally fell in love - unrequited - which must have been a blow to that massive ego. Her husband might well have been a functioning masochist; how else would he have managed? She benefitted from a 90% under-educated population. Many more women emerged of higher quality once education was available. In a later cohort I suspect she would not have been noticed as a poet.
I believe that sometimes people confuse mania with genius….She could write, but lacked the self discipline which could have taken her gifts to greater heights… Unfortunately, she believed that rules didn’t apply to her….in the end, her narcissism destroyed her
..."The only people I really hate are servants, they are not really human beings at all.. ....even their sins are not human sins...but the sins of magpies,of monkeys, serpents and pigs"!!!!! Wow what a vicious poem! How cruel and untrue.
Absolutely, such callous words! She despised the very people who made her life easier. I feel so sorry for them. I try to imagine how mistreated they were. Her sense of entitlement was so grotesque. Brilliant poetess, but despicable person. She spent her life using and descarting people. Her servants were human beings, something she was not.
I see this quote as pretty nasty. Who is this bi-ch? She was just a self appointed narcissist who used people and wrote poems of complaining and lamentations. It’s easy to see why she’s been dumped. She was basically a hooker…….of course she hated the Help, because they saw right through her. She was the sin.
It is untrue and disgusting. Still, as a poet myself, I can tell you, sometimes I get " downloads" that are so not me. I suspect she was taken up into the clouds like that too. Some of those can get very dark.
I wonder if some of her resentment came from the fact that servants see all and know all--they aren't fooled by public image and marketing. She wants to believe they are a different class of people so she doesn't have to feel or value their judgment.
Thank you for this well researched insight into yet another no longer with us character of times past. Atmospheric and informative of a different era. Where the result of Wars had such a profound impact on how people lived/loved afterwards. The agonies and sacrifices some experience for the love of another...as with her Husband. She certainly allowed "a lovely light" to rise up from within a place of conflict and shadows.
Regarding her sexuality they romanticized what was nothing more than an addiction. She was horribly out of control. She was an academic and an artist but that did not stop her from fully developing an life threatening addiction that led to dire consequences that destroyed her character. Very scary.
❤ So yep. Her addictions increased in kinds. Bipolar, sounds like she was. Very sad. She found ways to keep the manic euphoria. Sounds like she forgot the episodes of near psychosis. But maybe at her worst, she learned the soulful most. The most soulful and meaningful. She didn't slay her demons apparently in this life. By the mercy of God she might have been saved from herself for the afterlife. I pray. Memory eternal. Amen.
There's this wrong idea that for an artist to achieve greatness they must be free of bourgeois moral restraint. I believe the opposite is, in fact, true. I think she would have reached greater heights and become utterly fulfilled had she remained faithful to her moral core. Her talent was greater than her character. All her boozing, cheating, betrayal, drug use, hateful behavior, and using people for sex didn't help her writing, it just left a wake of bad feelings and harmed her legacy.
So very true. Sadly, this documentary tried to glamorize her pitiful lifestyle. Too bad they didn't emphasize that was her undoing. Maybe they did, I couldn't listen all the way through, I have no interest in such narcissistic behavior.
Her 1936 car accident might have left her with unbearable pain and led to her addictions. Too bad the titillating details of her life have overshadowed her gifts. Tragic ending for a gifted soul. RIP Edna my heart cries for you.
The only people she really hates are servants. They aren’t human beings. The other people she didn’t hate but she used Until she had no further use for them. Then they were simply discarded. No wonder she was neurotic, although she was a very good poet.
Well, I must write a long story here, that includes a poetry course I took in college. I am an unpublished poet, inspired from the age of 7. As an adult, and a young mother, I suddenly decided to take an evening poetry class. I began a lengthy, detailed essay/paper about her, and had a horrible time getting down to the task! I REALLY connected with her, beyond this physical world, as I am also a medium/channel. On the last few days before it was due, I became very ill with severe bronchitis. Slaved, struggled over the typewriter, late at night to get it finished, and truly felt like I was dying!! She came through to me. She truly was with me. I felt like I was meeting a past life version of myself. I started to believe it that night. I finally finished this, 'intense' paper at 4am the following morning, which was, I very suddenly and shockingly noticed, Her Birthday! Yes, I've felt Deeply connected to her. 💓😘🌟
In my late mother’s artifacts my brother and I found handwritten in pencil instructions for our mother such as changing the bed linens etc. This would’ve been sometime in the mid 1940’s before her 1947 marriage to our father.
@@marjoriegarner5369 Probably a UA-cam mess up; they dropped a comment of mine into every page I clicked on after that and making no sense whatsoever to the present video, until I rebooted my computer.
I strongly believe she had legitimate chronic pain that she was treating with the morphine and the addiction developed on top of that. People with legitimate pain issues are often able to take more than the average person and stay functional. She also had a history of severe digestive issues which can cause incredibly awful and deep pain. And they often find it difficult to treat the addiction because they NEED the medication to live a normal life. It's like someone with a food addiction- it's tough because you need food to live.
She remains a great poet, an original -- with a wonderful personality & character, promiscuous & so attractive -- and old enough to be my grandmother. I passed her Bedford Street home in Greenwich Village (where she lived until 1925) many times walking to work. I often had to point it out to some tourists who had no guide. Some got so emotional when they stood there before the stairs to her front door. I often stopped on my way to the prohibition pub Chumley's also on Bedford Street. It's about as close as one can get -- just to possess the same space. The women & some men who are narrating & speaking about Edna in this documentary are excellent. They know their subject & they tell the story well. When they don't know something is certain they admit it. What comes to light, in the end, is that Edna was not always a saint. But maybe that's what made her so interesting.
WOW……….. First, allow me to apologize in advance for my rather lengthy observation. Sadly, I predicted the outcome generally speaking…. even though I only just met this interesting poet by watching this superb documentary! As a writer, composer( predominately jazz) Mixed Media Artist; I think I, and for that matter, most of us are vaguely familiar with the seemingly hardwired paradox of life imitating art; particularly when the line becomes blurred between passion and obsession. Of which, as a creative, I’ve undoubtedly experienced my share of a life replete with its paradoxical quagmires. In due time, the universe reveals to the wise; the utter futility of those; daring enough to mix extraordinary artistic gifts; liberally sprinkled in sensual decadence, and topped with a helping of self entitlement and ruthlessness……. and served up with a side of sheer genius! TALK ABOUT POETIC JUSTICE! ( absolutely no pun intended) Yet………Edna St. Vincent Millay’s work can’t be denied…… and remains relevant. ( I have yet to glean more morsels from her palate) I actually happened upon an interesting side note concerning the name itself of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Since I’m familiar with a wonderful band called: “St. Vincent;” founded by lead singer/ songwriter Annie Clark in 2006 age 40 I thought Anne may have borrowed the catchy name from this fiery feminist/activist of the 20th century? Nope!!…… interestingly, she thought to name the band in honor of ANOTHER famous poet: Dylan Thomas; ( October 1914 to November 1953) Who died suddenly at age 39 at St. Vincent Hospital in New York. Soooo, strange as it may seem, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s mother Cora…. Named her poetic daughter after the hospital Edna’s uncle had received care………… YEP!…. That hospital was none other than the same St.Vincent hospital in New York!! Also a coincidence was the fact that both poets were rising stars around the same time even though there was a 20 year age difference as Edna was older. Perhaps their literary paths crossed even though Edna’s tragic passing was in October 1950…. and Dylan Thomas early death came in November 1953. One final bazaar coincidence. As we know Edna’s addiction to morphine and falling lead to her untimely demise. Strangely enough, Dylan Thomas was ACCIDENTALLY given a series of morphine injections to combat his declining bout of pneumonia; Which hasten his death at 39. ( I’ve not had a chance to explore his work…… but the majority of it was celebrated before his 15th birthday!) His quick marriage to Caitlin McNamara; ( also a writer) was a short lived tumultuous disaster of infidelity that ironically became a book and a play written by his wife after her life long battle with child abuse alcoholism. She requested to be buried next to her husband; Thomas, who had died 39 years earlier………………….She died in 1994. ……… she was 81 years old. Soooo, It’s true……….. writing takes bravery, passion…dedication…… and solitude. While we crave the necessity of this stillness, our carnal sensuality lies dormant…….. in jealous secrecy. So………the question of balance remains……………… LESS WE USE THE SWORD OF CREATIVITY TO SACRIFICE LOVE ON THE ALTER OF DREAMS rain 🕯
What a beautiful evocation of Edna Millay’s life and “Savage Beauty!” I fault it only faintly in that it didn’t address the Baudelaire translation project (initially George Dillon’s solo project, but which Vincent had to involve herself in to the point of unbridled domination!). After requisite disclaimers (poetry, not prose, being her forte!), she then goes on to write a most cogent, sympathetic and concise monograph of the great French poet. - I hope this may help: “WHAT SHALL YOU SAY TONIGHT?” What shall you say tonight, poor soul so full of care, What shall you say my heart, heart hitherto so sad, To the most kind, to the most dear, to the most fair, Whose pure serene regard has made you proud and glad? - We shall set all our pride to sing her holy praise! What sweetness to be hers! To live beneath her sight! Half spirit is her flesh, angelic all her ways; Her glance alone invests us in a robe of light! Whether in solitude and deep obscurity, whether by day among the moving crowd it be, Her phantom like torch in air will dance and run; It speaks: “Beauty is mine; Authority is mine; Love only for my sake, the noble and the fine; I am thine Angel, Muse, Madonna, all in one.”
Tnanks for this documentary from Spain. I'll include it in my Sisters. Workshops with Poems for Lifelong Learners of English, where I have designed a listening activitiy based on the viewing of this documentary and another on textual structure in documentaries, based on this http address too. Love her poetry! So alive!
Thank you for such an amazing documentary of an extraordinary woman, really enjoyed this past hour and a half, and now to exploring poetry I never knew existed.
Grateful for Edna's gift. Unfortunate she was unable to have developed an outstanding character. The condition of the soul is directly related to life satisfaction. Unhappy woman
- Kudos to Ms Lines for wonderful readings! Great work from all!
This short poem may encapsulate the quintessential E.St.V.M as well as any…
“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 coloured 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.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
She is my great great great aunt.. wow I can't believe there is a documentary about her.. I have some of her original books
Amazing...I love it when the families of these authors and poets drop by. Hang onto those books.
Wow. Do you know if any of her descendants/relatives had her same talent?
@@samsmom400
We celebrate the awesome legacy of talent she has left behind.
@@samsmom400 why is it horrible? It's only horrible if you cared what other people think. But what others think, is none of our business.
@@josephsf2452 having a reputation of using and abusing people is a horrible legacy to leave for your family. I believe that people who don't care about what others think, tend to have the lowest sense of morals. Sociopaths don't care about what others think. They don't have a moral compass and they're very dangerous.
She wanted no boundaries, no limits, no structure, no rules.
Her life played out the way it did as a result.
I feel like she does but my boundaries are self imposed ,nothing more or less than the golden rule and I'm usually happy or at worst blah meeting her end is unnecessary
Do you say that about male authors?
Ms. Millay was one of the first female poets I discovered as a young student in the 70s. Her words sparked a love of poetry writing in me. Thank you for uploading this documentary of her life.
"If I could have two things in one, the peace of the grave and the light of the sun..."🎉
Thats such a good one
Very good for 2022.
Wow
Wow
No one had or has a way with words like she did. They are profound in every way ❤️
My mother read her poems to us, alone with others, when I was a child. She wasn’t forgotten
Yes, her poems were a big part of my childhood and early college life. I would have detested her as a person (the way she talks about servants! Comparing them to pigs!) but she was an amazing poet.
@@patricias5122 I agree with you about her. A good poet, but a selfish, arrogant person. Often cruel, not considering how she hurt others or how others might feel. Really awful. Tragic.
My mother and grandmother were big fans of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry, but talked of their shock when they went to one of her readings and she came out onstage falling-down drunk. They owned every book she ever wrote, and read me some of what they called her "doggerel" when I was a child, such as:
"Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand.
Come and see my shining palace, built upon the sand."
I grew up memorizing some of her best and most beautiful poems.
@@patricias5122 If servants were pigs then she be the trough
"What a life I had
when back I should recall
I was seen and heard
for a time by all
Such a rise somehow disguised
what became my greatest fall
The love I stole, the love I sought,
brought me not the love for self
Giving way to spiral and decay
til but a shell upon a shelf - the very end of me ...
And of you, should you fail to see,
should you follow me" - LMC
After hearing her sad story here, a long poem just fell out of my head. I shortened it to the above. Not EVM worthy, but still a truth I see.
Incredible.
❤
I read yr poem and thought you were quoting one of E StV M’s poems. That’s pretty good
Beautiful poem. Relatable too.
Loved your poem. Thanks.
This is really beautiful.
What a lovely documentary. I was merely looking for a biographical piece to listen to while painting but was entranced. I am, perhaps her newest fan! The actress who read her poems was brilliant with just the right amount of archness to the words. Wonderful. Thank you.
I prefer the actress reading the poems to Millay's reading, her old-timey transatlantic accent is annoying alas
@@omfug7148 I feel the opposite. I find Millay's voice beautiful
“archness” love your word choice 💛
@@janetgeller7272
A well-thought and apt phrase indeed.
Excellent, very professional documentary about a sad, tragic, significant artist. Thanks for posting.
Thank you so much for this remarkable documentary. It was such a pleasure to listen to all the participants. Mrs. Millay was surely a brilliant poetess but little she knew about how to threat people with respect. She had such a distorted sense of entitlement. It was all about her desires and needs. The way she spoke about her servants, the way she used and discarded people for hedonistic purposes... just awful and full of callousness. Some people pass through this world causing so much devastation... Her legacy was of great contribution to Literature. Besides that, she was illiterate in regard to empathy.
Inspirational to all poets. 👏
Accurate assessment of an amoral individual. Sad to be so talented and yet empty of so much.
Would you be saying this about her behaviour if she were a man? Such judgement is always reserved for women when they are only expressing their desires with honesty. As well, many of her former lovers indeed stayed friends.
Not that I agree with her sentiments toward her servants. That is just nasty.
@@louiseorieux881 yes, the same holds true for men.
Thank you for this wonderful documentary. I too read her biography a few years back and thought what a phenomenal person. Of course, I was sad for the tragedies of her life but I love her poetry to this day. I think her time will come again.
Hi, I merely posted it, but you're welcome. And I think her time will come again too.
I'd never heard of this brilliant woman before this excellent documentary. Thank you.
I never heard of her either.
Where have you been on the literary front?
@@sarahjones-jf4pr Australia is my country.
@@badimiagirl1This author is of international fame known worldwide.
I am a very well read 73 Years old man, Raised by Grandmother, who also never spoke of Edna St. Vincent Millay: well she passed away 1950, I was born 1949. She is another Wonderful Woman and I am very happy to learn _ in my Old Age.
Surprising! She is in several anthologies if you studied American poetry. I graduated
in the 1990s.
Wonderful woman? That's quite a stretch there.
It's weird that she could ever have been forgotten. She's brilliant.
@@michellelekas211 Luckily we're permitted to differ on poetic taste. I like her very much. And I think she's far superior to much of what passes for poetry today.
She wasn’t a man. A man who’d been that famous would be celebrated.
@@kathygann7632 Could well be. But a great many male poets have also fallen out of fashion.
@@danhanqvist4237 that’s true, but there so few women, and she won a Pulitzer Prize. She should at least be covered in English and American literature classes. When my son went to college he was disgusted that almost no American writers at all were discussed, just ones from the UK.
@@kathygann7632 She should of course be in literature classes. She was when I went to high school in the US in the 1980s.
Her poem 'The Suicide' is just amazing. I performed it in highschool competitively when i was on the forensics team. I always got good feedback.
Omg, I did, too!
I performed the "Harp Weaver".
You guys did better…I did Walt Whitman leaves of grass.
For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
Nice put.
For purpose is a soul when it longs for true death? For if a Faustian bargain must be struck then so be it
Tonite your soul shall be required of you.
Indeed.....nothing .....absolutely nothing.....her celebrated life is all about her just for all....
Well at least God loved her. As biblical quotes are scattered among the comments perhaps the quotes saying (1) we are to love everyone, and (2) we are not to judge, would be most appropriate.
Her personal life was such an enigma to a mind like mine, so scattered and unsettled, that her poetry has an almost savant explanation. It's really astonishing she survived as long as she did once the addictions got such a powerful hold on her. I'd like to hear a qualified psychologist or psychiatrist offer up some explanation for some of her extreme behavior. Why are so many wildly creative people so plagued by tragedy? Thanks for the great video!
Everyone's life is filled with tragedy, heartache, soul rending pain; some people find ways to cope, more or less successfully, while others eventually fall victim to life. The main difference, to address your question as to why creative people are plagued with tragedy, is that creative's mine their pain for art, and if successful, then we know of their pain and think it...what? Marvelous is not the word; perhaps fascinating, as a rearing cobra, it's hood spread and poised to strike, is fascinating. Go to a coffee shop, ride on public transit and discreetly eavesdrop on others conversation, and you will see that famous artists are not made different because of their tragedy, but because they found ways to deal with their pain in ways others founding interesting.
She let her misery become her life.
@@toriblocker3238 Did she LET it, or did the misery overtake her? Don't shame a victim of severe mental illness by saying she had control over it
I would say she was nourished by the extreme passions that drove her. Literally her sustenance. Her fragile body had no choice but to continue surviving despite conditions that would be incompatible with life in anyone else. To be sure, she was a medical enigma.
The tragedies surrounding her were only the collateral damage of allowing pure chaotic emotion to keep the heart beating. Emotions are always self-righteous and so fickle.
The World is so fortunate that she had the gift of poetic expression. A glimpse into a madness that makes no sense yet will continue to deeply touch people as long as there is poetry. She didn't want to ever die. In a way, she never will.
Because as you grow older you will understand that you must suffer to be an artist
I am a teacher of English… never heard of her I am sad to say, at school, Uni or since. I am so glad to have found this; truly remarkable
?
English as a language?
i am so sad to hear that. Perhaps now you can remedy the disservice Your Teachers had done by allowing you to be ignorant of her work, by offering her Poetry to expand Your student's frame of reference... their minds & hearts?
I read a biography on her years ago. And you never hear anything about this most gifted poet, so thank you for this.
That was Savage Beauty most likely. Extraordinary woman.
@@jeanettesdaughter yes, that was an excellent biography, in fact one of the best I've ever read. Highly recommended.
Is that biography more elucidating?
Oh man I was disturbed by her view of her servants & treatment of them.
It’s over shadowing my admiration for her talent & freedom.
Maybe she had Asperger syndrome? That would at the least make me understand. Perhaps she is a narcissist.
I graduated from college 22 years and took a lot of poetry classes but I don’t remember her name coming up ever! What a brilliant brilliant writer that should be thought of with the great American poets!!
She was in my English poetry anthology. Not her best poems however...
I remember taking a poetry class at the art college i was attending. We were told to buy a book "Americas 100 Best Poems " Or "Poets"- i cant remember- this was over 40 years ago . But i DO remember that there were only 2 women poets represented in the entire book. Neither one was Millay. Maybe thats how she came to be forgotten.
Your comment and experience are a single sunbeam successfully surviving a tumultuous tumble through an especially dark atmospheric cloud... 🙏🎭
At least Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath?
@@madelainepetrin1430 Sylvia Plath and i believe Elizabeth Bishop. Btw, the teacher of that class was co author of the book and a poet too. Very full of himself too i might add.
@dreams of turtles my professor was Cesar Blake, his last year teaching. I kept his anthology. Last night, I was reading Don Juan by Lord Byron, and I must say I found it very humorous. I was laughing out loud at some passages. Finally, the gender of the poet is irrelevant. What matters is the poem, the rhymes, and the emotions.
What I find most remarkable about this video are the sympathetic scholars who provide the commentary and the analysis of Millay's life and work. They are all to be commended. The insights of Nancy Milford and Elizabeth Barnett are both accurate and endearing, and one regrets not having the opportunity to visit with them.
As for Millay as a poet, she was facile and technically gifted, but with a very narrow artistic vision. All of her poems are autobiographical examinations, even those that are not love poems. She was extremely self-absorbed and in passionate pursuit of experiences of all kinds, without regard to the consequences, as J.D. McClatchy points out. In this she was not unlike the other writers of her era -- Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Ezra Pound, et al -- who were all equally limited as artists and equally stunted as human beings. Millay was the voice of the feminists of the 1920s, just as Fitzgerald was the voice of the Jazz Age. And when the age passed, their limitations became apparent and their work no longer resonated with an audience that had moved on. All of them enjoyed the celebrity of the moment and outlived the fad.
In Millay's case, she seemed incapable of expressing anything but her own feelings. Where are the larger ideas about life? About other people? Her contemporaries were not so limited. "Mending Wall" is not about Frost, "The Wasteland" is not about T.S. Eliot, "You, Andrew Marvel" is not about Archibald MacLeish. Those poems derive from the poet's experience, as they must, but they are about something more than the self. Millay, on the other hand, seems never to have been able to transcend herself, to see the world whole. Her own feelings were her sole theme, and also her weakness as a poet. Today, like Fitzgerald and Hemingway, her celebrity and her persona has become more important than her works.
Very well said. Too bad the narrator's didn't figure this out.
I'm not sure I can agree with you in regard to Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and ... Ezra Pound, fer gawd's sake - "equally limited"?? .... (And Hemingway, whatever his limitations, was probably the most influential prose-stylist of the past century, in English at least, for better or for worse.) But "a very narrow artistic vision" is certainly an apt description of Millay's work, and comparison with her contemporaries such as Frost et al is telling.
She wrote about life from her perspective. I don't see that as a fault in anyway, sorry.
She brings insight to the thoughts and needs of the human being. Some are brave enough to go their own way
So a comparison to Taylor Swift is not ill-based?
They say she's forgotten? I wasn't aware. My family adores her. I just assumed her fame was universal.
Me too!! You can't love Mary Oliver without Edna!!
I think she's not at all forgotten.
I’ve heard a lot about her, but never heard that she was forgotten lol
A fine poet ; A sad ending . I really enjoyed the past hour and a half. This is quite a good documentary about a poet I've never been familiar with, but now I feel as if I had . I'm now, you could say, one of Edna Millay's fans .
We were homeschoolers and read her poetry. I enjoyed this documentary, thank you.
Edna St. Vincent Millay February 22, 1892 - October 19, 1950
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,-but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,-
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Thank you. Dirge Without Music. 😥❤
This is my anti loss of life of my family and friends and animals ANTHEM. I do not approve.
Other than knowing she was a poet, I didn’t know anything about her life. This was enlightening to say the least. She certainly was brilliant! Having said that, she was not a kind person. I believe the latter should be sought after so much more than the former.
Agreed!
Beautiful presentation...humorous, ironic, and serious moments interspersed perfectly. So natural, as she must have been. As a child required to scribble 4th grade poetry, I imitated her because I loved the lilt of her name ....I became a musician, and wrote many songs. The kinship is so close, although I regret that her art form failed to overcome her illness and addictions. Tragic loss.
Dear Edna taught me since I was 13. I memorized her words and took them to heart.
Her poems remain among my favorites; started in high school in the early 1960's for Speech class. She touches a person's soul....
I'm surprised at her meanness to the servants. Being rude to your servants is just plain dumb. They have so many ways of getting even. Serving spit soup is the least of them. lol She is my favorite poet, however, in spite of that terrible sin.
Usually those who have been poor and later succeeded are kind to those who do still work for a living. To be mean to servants surprised me
@@meman6964 I was going to say the opposite. It comes from insecurity. Those genuinely born into wealth and privilege have no need to be rude to those below them to demonstrate their superiority; on the contrary, they go out of their way to be magnanimous and gracious. Good breeding and all that. They're also prepared to put up with a certain amount of insolence, disrespect, laziness, bad behaviour, etc. from servants since that's all part of noblesse oblige. But those who have had to claw their way up from the bottom feel their position is precarious, so they look down on the lower class since they remind them of what they used to be. They sometimes put them down in order to reinforce the gap between them and their own recently-acquired tenuously-held higher status. That's been my observation. Similar to how nobody's nastier to women than other women. Familiarity breeds contempt whereas unfamiliarity breeds romsnticisation. People I know who've been brought up privileged and with no real experience of poverty or contact with the poor see them as poor oppressed helpless victims and are very lefty and concerned with 'social justice' and so on. But people like me who come from the lower middle class and who have been around plenty of poor people, been in their houses, etc. have very little sympathy for them since we know their poverty comes from their own poor habits and life choices. They choose to be the way they are, and I think they prefer it. In just the same way, nobody despises dole bludgers more than their next door neighbours working their backsides off on minimum wage.
@@TomorrowWeLive That may be true of some, but most certainly not all. The same for the statement that growing up poor will somehow make you magically kind to others.
@@TomorrowWeLive All of that just sounds like self hatred to me. Many who come from those environments still understand the challenges that lower income people face, and that their “bad choices” don’t exist in a vacuum.
It seems to me Edna kept a strong loyalty, above all, to her mother and then her sisters.
I think the loss of her father leaving them and the struggles her mother had to raise them all, had a profound affect on her. I dont think she ever got over the abandonment and lack of his love.
Beautiful tribute to a very unique woman. So flawed and yet that was an intricate part of her larger than life passion. Thank you for uploading this documentary.
My dear Edna, you will never be forgotten!! Again, I am watching this documentary about Edna. As in my existence, I can understand her complicated life, her passions, her obsessions, and her addictions. I too agree she was possibly was probably a manic depressive. Although, I am not a doctor. A broken flower of unknown dimensions that still shines in hearts that don't judge. A life that is a life that flames with passion, joy, and tragedy. We all suffer do we not? The transformation we may be able to gain if we live long enough. Edna will always be one of America's great poets. Reverence ✨️ ❤️
Thank you for this documentary.
.
I love the woman reading her poems. I like listening to hear reading them more than the ones with Edna reading them online.
What a joy to have seen this. So well done. Lovely readings, and information by all. Ms. Lines was delightful.
The poem 'Memory of Cape Cod' by Ms. Millay was selected and read by Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg at Jacqueline Kennedy's funeral on 84th and Park in 1994, NYC. Thank you, for this time well spent!
I love her poem about spring - 'Is it enough that yearly down this hill April comes babbling like an idiot and strewing flowers?' Also, Leonard Bernstein puts to music one of her poems in his song-cycle 'Songfest'. (Also Walt Whitman.)
These documentaries are super, so well crafted. i just looked up Nancy Milford, she seems like such a good story teller/ raconteur. She passed away only a few weeks ago, the end of March. RiP Ms. Milford. I shall certainly be reading the biographies you have written.
That's too bad. I just read that Liz Barnett died a year or two after this was filmed and now her daughter is president of the Millay society. You can really feel the love they all have for Edna coming through.
Jessica Mitford was a handy writer too, there was a classic she wrote about the funeral industry in the US. A great writer can make any subject completely riveting! not sure whether Jessica still lives, she would be very elderly if so. The Mitford girls, the aristocratic counterpoint to the Brontes...
Milford not Mitford
@@merriestroscher5795 Exactly. Thank you.
@@twistoffate4791 IT IS MITFORD and yes, Jessica was my favorite of the sisters but Nancy was a fabulous novelist and biographer (Millay, Zelda Fitzgerald). Jessica passed in 1996. Unity, Deborah, Pamela, Nancy, Jessica were the Mitford sisters.
Such a sad lonely ending to such beautiful brilliance. Thank you for this amazing documentary on such an extraordinary life.
Witch Wife is my favorite poem of hers. Thanks for the biography!❤️
Hello how are you doing?
What a woman! What poetry! I’m so moved by this video.
Even her name is poetic.
My mother loved to recite poetry, Robert Service was one of her favorites, as well as Robert Frost.
This film I think was well informed, its share of details not the norm, Millay, more a student of self, still was brilliant, her works, a wealth, the way Ms. Edna wrote from life, must have given some relief from strife, every word a road once traveled, every book, an era unraveled. By Me
Her life isn’t so different from other writers of her generation like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The alcoholism, affairs, broken health, addiction, and early death. I was such a fan of hers back in the 60s.
Why?
Me too!
Not all won the Pulitzer, though.
They have proven that people with red hair need more medication to have an effect, also with premature babies as well. Maybe that is why she took so many drugs to get the same relief from pain as anyone else would.
Yes!!!! I’ve only had 2 doctors that knew this.
I carry the studies with me. It’s terrifying. I have/had to get multiple surgeries for spinal issues and then a horrible car accident.
I give my dentist credit for knowing.
Thank you for bringing this up.
Oh , the choices we make..... very interesting story.
A very well made documentary about about a loathsome human being who wrote brilliant poetry.
I honestly don’t understand people’s acceptance to those who treat other humans with disdain! Treating the poor with respect gives honor to our creator!
This series of documentaries is so well done! Thank you so much!
Those who judge reveal themselves.
I have treasured her work at many points of life and shared her with friends, and later my daughter. I appreciate this story and will add it to other bits of her story.
A very sympathetic and comprehensive study.
She appears to be the classic narcissist: vain, cruel, transactional and not terribly deep. Her poetry is fun, sometimes trite, often cruel and spoiled.
She used people mercilessly and forgot the charm when dealing with servants who she despised. An utter horror! A butterfly made of cold steel decked in velvet. I enjoyed the story but hated the way she treated people, beginning to wish she could only Fall in Love, fall and experience the deep feelings she’d inspired in innocent others. So against my character I was not sad when she finally fell in love - unrequited - which must have been a blow to that massive ego.
Her husband might well have been a functioning masochist; how else would he have managed?
She benefitted from a 90% under-educated population. Many more women emerged of higher quality once education was available. In a later cohort I suspect she would not have been noticed as a poet.
I never heard a word of her other than her name till this evening, and so happy I have
I believe that sometimes people confuse mania with genius….She could write, but lacked the self discipline which could have taken her gifts to greater heights…
Unfortunately, she believed that rules didn’t apply to her….in the end, her narcissism destroyed her
Simply captivating. A wonderous individual with a sharp bite and melodic tongue.
Let's be frank: Millay was a 'nympho'. 18 different lovers in the space of 1 month is pretty good evidence.
The actress reading her poetry and writings is excellent!
Awesome documentary! I learned so much! Thank you for the poignant story of this remarkable woman's life!
Thank you for this program.
You're welcome 👍
Every single thing about this Millay documentary beautiful and sublime. Thank you for sharing❤
Sad story. Beautiful story telling. She was a terribly great poet although not the most pleasant person. Thank you for this!
..."The only people I really hate are servants, they are not really human beings at all..
....even their sins are not human sins...but the sins of magpies,of monkeys, serpents and pigs"!!!!!
Wow what a vicious poem! How cruel and untrue.
Absolutely, such callous words! She despised the very people who made her life easier. I feel so sorry for them. I try to imagine how mistreated they were. Her sense of entitlement was so grotesque. Brilliant poetess, but despicable person. She spent her life using and descarting people. Her servants were human beings, something she was not.
I see this quote as pretty nasty. Who is this bi-ch? She was just a self appointed narcissist who used people and wrote poems of complaining and lamentations. It’s easy to see why she’s been dumped. She was basically a hooker…….of course she hated the Help, because they saw right through her. She was the sin.
It is untrue and disgusting. Still, as a poet myself, I can tell you, sometimes I get " downloads" that are so not me. I suspect she was taken up into the clouds like that too. Some of those can get very dark.
I wonder if some of her resentment came from the fact that servants see all and know all--they aren't fooled by public image and marketing. She wants to believe they are a different class of people so she doesn't have to feel or value their judgment.
thank you so much for uploading these!
No problem!
I read Renascence when I was 14; it was in my Freshman English book. I remember part of it 60 years later.
Me, too!!
My Favorite
Thank you for this well researched insight into yet another no longer with us character of times past. Atmospheric and informative of a different era. Where the result of Wars had such a profound impact on how people lived/loved afterwards. The agonies and sacrifices some experience for the love of another...as with her Husband. She certainly allowed "a lovely light" to rise up from within a place of conflict and shadows.
I had one favorite poem of hers ina book of poetry stolen. It was haunting. I had no idea. Thank you for this documentary.
Thank you very much for this.
Regarding her sexuality they romanticized what was nothing more than an addiction. She was horribly out of control. She was an academic and an artist but that did not stop her from fully developing an life threatening addiction that led to dire consequences that destroyed her character. Very scary.
❤ So yep. Her addictions increased in kinds. Bipolar, sounds like she was. Very sad. She found ways to keep the manic euphoria. Sounds like she forgot the episodes of near psychosis. But maybe at her worst, she learned the soulful most. The most soulful and meaningful. She didn't slay her demons apparently in this life. By the mercy of God she might have been saved from herself for the afterlife. I pray. Memory eternal. Amen.
Love the actress who is reading her
Kudos! This was an extremely well done documentary!
An explanation not an excuse:
Could her mistreatment of sevants been a hatred for her past history of poverty?
She saw her past in those servants.
Snobbery always has to put someone else down in order to deny one's own deep-seated sense of worthlessness.
Could she in fact have really bad servants? How many did she have, maybe she should have hired them in the first place.
When I hear someone say such vile things about people, I could care less about the reasons for behind such ugliness.
Perhaps her loathing of her servants was rooted in the common indiscretions between the servants and male members of the household
Great presentation. It's a shame she thought she was better than "servants." She forgot where she came from. Missed humanity. Sad.
A wonderful documentary, telling us the story of a fascinating, extraordinary life.
Hello how are you doing?
There's this wrong idea that for an artist to achieve greatness they must be free of bourgeois moral restraint. I believe the opposite is, in fact, true. I think she would have reached greater heights and become utterly fulfilled had she remained faithful to her moral core. Her talent was greater than her character. All her boozing, cheating, betrayal, drug use, hateful behavior, and using people for sex didn't help her writing, it just left a wake of bad feelings and harmed her legacy.
She didn't have a moral core, that's was the point.
So very true. Sadly, this documentary tried to glamorize her pitiful lifestyle. Too bad they didn't emphasize that was her undoing. Maybe they did, I couldn't listen all the way through, I have no interest in such narcissistic behavior.
Her 1936 car accident might have left her with unbearable pain and led to her addictions. Too bad the titillating details of her life have overshadowed her gifts. Tragic ending for a gifted soul. RIP Edna my heart cries for you.
I'm shedding my tears for the people she cruelly used. Specifically anyone who had to be a servant to her.
@ubu booboo You are right. The whole situation is tragic.
The only people she really hates are servants. They aren’t human beings. The other people she didn’t hate but she used Until she had no further use for them. Then they were simply discarded.
No wonder she was neurotic, although she was a very good poet.
“She did what all good writers do, she behaved badly.”
I think what I have heard of her poetry was average at best.
@@traciebecker6669 Maybe that explains why she has largely forgotten today.
@@Edward-xw8rj How could Edna forget today, she is dead!
@@CB-zf5wt when I heard that, I thought, "What an idiot."
Well, I must write a long story here, that includes a poetry course I took in college. I am an unpublished poet, inspired from the age of 7.
As an adult, and a young mother, I suddenly decided to take an evening poetry class.
I began a lengthy, detailed essay/paper about her, and had a horrible time getting down to the task! I REALLY connected with her, beyond this physical world, as I am also a medium/channel.
On the last few days before it was due, I became very ill with severe bronchitis. Slaved, struggled over the typewriter, late at night to get it finished, and truly felt like I was dying!!
She came through to me. She truly was with me. I felt like I was meeting a past life version of myself. I started to believe it that night. I finally finished this, 'intense' paper at 4am the following morning, which was, I very suddenly and shockingly noticed, Her Birthday!
Yes, I've felt Deeply connected to her. 💓😘🌟
“Time does not bring relief. You all have lied.”
In my late mother’s artifacts my brother and I found handwritten in pencil instructions for our mother such as changing the bed linens etc. This would’ve been sometime in the mid 1940’s before her 1947 marriage to our father.
Johann, can you tell me what your comment has to do with Millay? I'm just curious.
?
@@marjoriegarner5369 Probably a UA-cam mess up; they dropped a comment of mine into every page I clicked on after that and making no sense whatsoever to the present video, until I rebooted my computer.
My favorite has always been Recuerdo. I've loved it since I was 12 or 13.
Another great documentary 👍💖
Recuerdo was always my favorite, too. I loved my big volume of her poetry and knew nothing of her life.
I strongly believe she had legitimate chronic pain that she was treating with the morphine and the addiction developed on top of that. People with legitimate pain issues are often able to take more than the average person and stay functional. She also had a history of severe digestive issues which can cause incredibly awful and deep pain. And they often find it difficult to treat the addiction because they NEED the medication to live a normal life. It's like someone with a food addiction- it's tough because you need food to live.
What an elegant yet adventurous soul . May she be always seen in life as she wished
To me this is only sad. Such talent marred by hopeless dissolution and self destruction. What a cautionary tale.
Good documentary
She remains a great poet, an original -- with a wonderful personality & character, promiscuous & so attractive -- and old enough to be my grandmother.
I passed her Bedford Street home in Greenwich Village (where she lived until 1925) many times walking to work. I often had to point it out to some tourists who had no guide. Some got so emotional when they stood there before the stairs to her front door. I often stopped on my way to the prohibition pub Chumley's also on Bedford Street. It's about as close as one can get -- just to possess the same space.
The women & some men who are narrating & speaking about Edna in this documentary are excellent. They know their subject & they tell the story well. When they don't know something is certain they admit it.
What comes to light, in the end, is that Edna was not always a saint. But maybe that's what made her so interesting.
What a very sad life. I had no idea.
This is so wonderful, thank you!
I love especially her sonnets. Gorgeous poetry.
Loved this documentary, and to know about her life and, of course, her incredible poems.
WOW………..
First,
allow me to apologize in advance for my rather lengthy observation.
Sadly,
I predicted the outcome generally speaking…. even though I only just met this interesting poet by watching this superb documentary!
As a writer, composer( predominately jazz) Mixed Media Artist;
I think I, and for that matter,
most of us are vaguely familiar with the seemingly hardwired paradox of life imitating art;
particularly when the line becomes blurred between passion and obsession.
Of which, as a creative, I’ve undoubtedly experienced my share of a life replete with its paradoxical quagmires.
In due time, the universe reveals to the wise; the utter futility of those;
daring enough to mix extraordinary artistic gifts;
liberally sprinkled in sensual decadence, and topped with a helping of self entitlement and ruthlessness……. and served up with a side of sheer genius!
TALK ABOUT POETIC JUSTICE!
( absolutely no pun intended)
Yet………Edna St. Vincent Millay’s work can’t be denied…… and remains relevant. ( I have yet to glean more morsels from her palate)
I actually happened upon
an interesting side note concerning the name itself of
Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Since I’m familiar with a wonderful band called: “St. Vincent;”
founded by lead singer/ songwriter Annie Clark in 2006 age 40
I thought Anne may have borrowed the catchy name from this fiery feminist/activist of the 20th century?
Nope!!…… interestingly, she thought to name the band in honor of ANOTHER famous poet:
Dylan Thomas;
( October 1914 to November 1953)
Who died suddenly at age 39
at St. Vincent Hospital in New York.
Soooo, strange as it may seem,
Edna St. Vincent Millay’s mother Cora…. Named her poetic daughter after the hospital Edna’s uncle had received care………… YEP!…. That hospital was none other than the same
St.Vincent hospital in New York!!
Also a coincidence was the fact that both poets were rising stars around the same time even though there was a 20 year age difference as Edna was older.
Perhaps their literary paths crossed even though Edna’s tragic passing was in October 1950…. and Dylan Thomas early death came in November 1953.
One final bazaar coincidence.
As we know Edna’s addiction to morphine and falling lead to her untimely demise.
Strangely enough, Dylan Thomas was ACCIDENTALLY given a series of morphine injections to combat his declining bout of pneumonia;
Which hasten his death at 39.
( I’ve not had a chance to explore his work…… but the majority of it was celebrated before his 15th birthday!)
His quick marriage to Caitlin McNamara; ( also a writer) was a short lived tumultuous disaster of infidelity that ironically became a book and a play written by his wife after her life long battle with child abuse alcoholism.
She requested to be buried next to her husband; Thomas, who had died 39 years earlier………………….She died in 1994.
……… she was 81 years old.
Soooo,
It’s true……….. writing takes bravery,
passion…dedication…… and solitude.
While we crave the necessity of this
stillness,
our carnal sensuality lies dormant…….. in jealous secrecy.
So………the question of balance remains………………
LESS WE USE THE SWORD
OF CREATIVITY
TO SACRIFICE LOVE
ON THE ALTER
OF DREAMS
rain 🕯
Ms Lines read perfectly...truly seemed to embody Ms Millay. Documentary left me feeling empty, saddened. Edna was gifted but empty.
What a beautiful evocation of Edna Millay’s life and “Savage Beauty!” I fault it only faintly in that it didn’t address the Baudelaire translation project (initially George Dillon’s solo project, but which Vincent had to involve herself in to the point of unbridled domination!). After requisite disclaimers (poetry, not prose, being her forte!), she then goes on to write a most cogent, sympathetic and concise monograph of the great French poet.
- I hope this may help:
“WHAT SHALL YOU SAY TONIGHT?”
What shall you say tonight, poor soul so full of care, What shall you say my heart, heart hitherto so sad, To the most kind, to the most dear, to the most fair, Whose pure serene regard has made you proud and glad?
- We shall set all our pride to sing her holy praise! What sweetness to be hers! To live beneath her sight! Half spirit is her flesh, angelic all her ways; Her glance alone invests us in a robe of light!
Whether in solitude and deep obscurity, whether by day among the moving crowd it be, Her phantom like torch in air will dance and run;
It speaks: “Beauty is mine; Authority is mine; Love only for my sake, the noble and the fine; I am thine Angel, Muse, Madonna, all in one.”
My. favorite poet since I was a youngster.
Tnanks for this documentary from Spain. I'll include it in my Sisters. Workshops with Poems for Lifelong Learners of English, where I have designed a listening activitiy based on the viewing of this documentary and another on textual structure in documentaries, based on this http address too. Love her poetry! So alive!
By far, the most beautiful poem I’ve ever read is Edna St Vincent Miley’s “The Ballad of the Harp Weaver”.
Not all great poets are self-indulgent wrecks.
Yes. I don't know why the 'experts' say a couple of times that to be a poet you basically have to be ruthless toward other people. No, not really.
Thank you for such an amazing documentary of an extraordinary woman, really enjoyed this past hour and a half, and now to exploring poetry I never knew existed.
Grateful for Edna's gift. Unfortunate she was unable to have developed an outstanding character.
The condition of the soul is directly related to life satisfaction.
Unhappy woman
Father wound... Pretty obvious.
This woman has a lot in common with my ex-wife and I’m not talking about her poetry skills
Join the club
😃😄😁😆
You poor thing... I hope you didn't have any children together.
😂😂😂 sorry
😂
Another well done documentary - from a Write Like fan and subscriber.
Lots of rumor and conjecture treated as fact ..Brilliant