A review by salicat
Collected Poems by Norma Millay, Edna St. Vincent Millay

5.0

I passed by "Savage Beauty" years ago, struck by the picture of the woman on the cover. It was a bio of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. I'd never heard of her, but she looked like something out of The Great Gatsby. I decided to pick up her poetry finally, and the first one I turned to was "Renascence." I've adored various poets- Neruda, Angelou, Noyes, but I felt this one poem more deeply than years of literature put together. A poem's never done that to me- I was shocked, tearful, joyous, frozen altogether.

The poems that strike us the most are the simple ones with spirit and fire- almost too precious to be dissected in English classes. So is the case with this one. It's almost a blessing that being graded on Millay never happened to most people- it makes the reading fresh, clandestine, like someone sneaking a first kiss behind the trees.