Edna St. Vincent Millay is born
On this day poet Edna St.Vincent Millay is born in Rockland Maine.One of three daughters of a divorced nurse Millay learned independence and self-reliance early and transmitted those qualities to her poetry.She began publishing poetry in high school.
In 1912 the year she turned 20 her poem Renascence appeared in a literary review and drew the attention of a benefactor who made it possible for Millay to attend Vassar.The year she graduated in 1917 her first volume of poetry Renascence and Other Poems appeared.Millay moved to New York City where she lived a hectic glamorous life as a writer and actress in Greenwich Village.One of the first women to write openly and without shame about her lovers Millay had numerous affairs.
In 1920 her famous poem First Fig set the tone for the 1920s with its resounding lines My candle burns at both ends it will not last the night.Millays fast-paced life took a toll.Exhausted she traveled to Europe for a long rest in 1921.There she met and married Dutch importer Jan Boissevan who gave up his business to devote himself to Millay.
In 1923 the couple moved to a farm in upstate New York where Millay continued to write verse and plays.That year she published The Harp Weaver and Other Poems for which she became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize.A passionate proponent of civil liberty she was arrested and jailed for supporting Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti anarchists condemned to death for robbery and murder.In the 1930s she wrote anti-totalitarian poetry for newspapers as well as radio plays and speeches.
She suffered a nervous breakdown in 1944 and endured two years of writers block afterward.She broke down again after her husbands death in 1949 and she died of a heart attack a year later.
