The problem for Edna St Vincent Millay, as for so many diarists, is that the more noteworthy a given period of her life, the less likely it was that she would find time to diarise it. Big stretches of this cover the era of her waiting for life to start; a shorter but distressing closing section covers the time when it was pretty much over. Yes, we also get glimpses of her first entry into the wider world, and then some sketches from Paris, London and Albania, but the first are spotty in the extreme and the latter beautiful but even more intermittent than usual. And as for her imperial phase? "it would appear that during that extraordinary decade, 1914-1924, she did not keep a diary because she had neither the time nor the energy to devote to it." More vexing still, while some people unleash in their diaries that which they cannot say in the official work, for the most part it's clear that Millay – quite legitimately, it must be noted – kept her genius for her work. Even in those last years, still producing, you'd hope that maybe her obvious delight in the wildlife around her at her last fastness, Steepletop, would inspire great flights of writing – especially when the images of birds in a tree is so central to one of her finest poems. Alas, no; you get occasional glimpses of that, including a brief but lovely evocation of life on Ragged Island, but for the most part it's just a list of what she's seen. And those are the good bits, in among the moans about how you can't get the staff, or the various health problems (most distressing of which must be the scratched cornea after a sleigh accident in a snowstorm – this is very much not how the song Sleigh Ride painted proceedings). By the end, it's pretty much a sad little record of drug doses, and hard reading when it's coming from a writer you feel like you know. But then, the start was hard reading too, albeit for different reasons, when the diary was initially given the persona of Mammy Hush-Chile (yes, I'm afraid so), before becoming the unknown Man for whom she longs.

More often, though, it's simply dull. From the early years:
"Wed. June 8 Weather Fair
Washed all day. Martha & Ethel were down a few minutes. Have promised myself to practice at least an hour a day. I got in almost two hours today. Worked on Mama's corset cover this evening."

Once things are looking up, and Millay's wealthy benefactors have sent her off to college:
"Thursday, August 14
Algebra.
Saturday, August 16
Algebra."

Or:
"Monday, December 22
Nothing much."
But each time you're wondering whether to skim, there's a morsel, as here, where the next entry, which should be infuriating but from her is wonderful, asks "I wonder why people love me so."

Still, if nothing else, the longueurs must reassure all of us who've occasionally noticed the Pooterish inconsequentiality of some of our own diary entries. Hell, it even offers some consolation for awful handwriting, with [?] a frequent guest and multiple [illegible]s to a page in Paris. And every now and then, it catches fire. Sometimes it's entertaining, as when her ten commandments to herself begin "1. Thou shalt not sit on thy foot
2. Thou shalt not cross thy knees", and generally suggest her as an early example of the notorious bisexual inability to sit sensibly.
The humour can also come through the application of hindsight, of course:
"Boys don't like me because I won't let them kiss me."
How things would change!
Or later:
"Men are an awful bother. They interfere with my studies. It's got to stop."
[VOICEOVER: It did not stop]

Once in a while, though, there are passages of the magic one expects from Millay. If anything these are most frequent in the early years, when she may be less practiced, but also lacks other outlets for that terribly keen sense of time passing, whether it be expressed in the Sisyphean horror of having to do the same tasks week after week and never having time to appreciate the beauty of the world, "feeling every day more tired and crushed and driven than ever before", or a more poignant mode which hints at the great poems of loss to come: "If only I had known, and had climbed enough trees and made enough mudpies to last me through the awful days when I should want to and couldn't!" Flashes remain afterwards, though, just enough for me not to regret reading this: "They sang the Hallelujah Chorus. I honestly believe, as truly as I believe in fairies, that angels always join in that. They always sing the "Hallelujahs." I'm sure of it." True, to some extent a Netgalley ARC probably wasn't the best format; too hard to flick to the endnotes for clarification, though while the ones on figures of the day are useful, or those confirming quite how many of her classmates Millay romanced, there are also a lot telling us who John Milton or Lewis Carroll are, without even justifying themselves by glossing their specific relevance. Still, all in all it's hard not to think back to Millay's initial warning: "whosoever, by stealth or any other underhand means, opens these pages to read, shall be subject to the rack, the guillotine, the axe, the scaffold, or any other form of torture I may see fit to administer." Well, you went one better with your curse, Vincent, and made it so that the crime was also its own punishment. The introduction suggests that "As long as there are lovers, they will be reading Millay", and I'd like to think that's true, but I don't think they'll be reading this.

Millay's poems were one of the first poems that I truly adored and read outside of an academic and/or out of obligation. This publication - of her diaries is absolutely delightful, beautiful; and refreshed my adoration and admiration of her with every diary entry. As Millay's 'fan', this was a dream to read. I couldn't have imagined a better version of this. Along with my Kafka and Plath journals, Millay's will be another indispensable acquisition/collection.

VERY thankful to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Reading this book was one of the best reading experiences I have ever had. Was it difficult? Indeed. But I think it took me a while because I wanted to savour all and each diary entry and not just pass through it as the wind does. Edna was a very sensitive writer and her diary entries not only show that but also makes you feel all of that sensitivity. What a delightful collection from one of the best poets to ever exist.

It took me a while to get through this one. It was interesting and I enjoyed the writing, but I think I underestimated how difficult I would find reading a diary to be.

As I said, it was certainly interesting. Edna St Vincent Millay is an interesting figure in general and I loved getting a look into life as it was in years past. Some of it actually really surprised me. For example, it never occurred to me that there would be organized basketball games for girls in the 1910s, so I was a bit shocked when she mentioned her sister playing. Perhaps it's a reflection of my ignorance in regards to that point in history, but it was a tidbit that made me pause to consider. I also enjoyed hearing references to music and literature. All these details made it like I had a window looking into the past.

That said, I will confess that not all of this looking back was pleasant. Certain passages had me cringing. Additionally, reading about the day to day can get a bit monotonous at times so I felt the need to divide up my reading.

Still, I feel this book was worth picking up and I am grateful to NetGalley for the arc
.

A collection of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s diaries that focus primarily on her adolescence and her later life, showing how greatly her life and personality changed. At the beginning, she was merely a high school student and primary caretaker for her two younger sisters, but after the publication of Renascence, she catapulted to fame, being offered college scholarships.

The diaries skip over her early adulthood, to her marriage to Eugen and their at-first idyllic life at their farm in upstate New York. But as her diaries chronicle, Millay changed later in life, due, in part, to fame and disappointments in love, but mainly due to her increasing use of alcohol, morphine, and other drugs. It’s important to keep in mind that she wrote her diaries, which is obvious, but she certainly realized after she achieved success, that they might someday be read by others. So she’s choosing what she wants people to know, and at times, it’s shockingly revelatory. I’ve read other biographies and a fictionalized biography, which made me dislike Millay, although I still liked her work. However, reading these diaries made me feel more sympathetic for her. #RaptureandMelancholy #NetGalley

Starting in 1907 as a teenager, Edna St Vincent Millay began documenting her life in a series of diaries, ending in 1949. These diaries chart her early hopes and dreams, her rise to fame as one of the most prominent American contemporary poets, her farm life with her husband Eugen, and her struggles with alcohol and morphine addiction.

I am not a reader of poetry – it simply doesn’t appeal to me terribly. Consequently my knowledge of all but the most well-known poets is a little lacking, though I have heard of Edna St. Vincent Millay before. On the other hand, as a fairly consistent diarist for over a decade, I’ve always been interested in the diaries of others and picked up this book because I thought it would be interesting to get to know a such once-prominent figure for the first time in such an intimate way.

Of course, this being a diary spanning such a period of time, the dates of the entries vary wildly, and as it was never written in expectation of being made public, its level of interest to the reader varies as well. I really enjoyed the early entries, full of Millay’s enthusiasm and her hopes and dreams – the passages on the dream lover for example I found really revealing. I also appreciated the notes and the introduction to each section of the diary, as they helped clarify many of the things Millay only alluded to, as well as present backdrops to situations that she apparently found too private to discuss in the diaries.

I liked the lyrical style of writing when it emerged, but Millay unfortunately usually stuck to more brusk recountings of people seen and things done that I often found myself skimming over. I also wished that she wrote more about her thoughts and feelings about things in the second distinct part of the diaries, as she had when she was young, for I felt we ended up missing out on a lot of the insight we had gotten early on. This is of course merely the nature of reading someone else’s private personal papers though.

In the introduction, the editor discusses various reasons why one may be compelled to publish a certain person’s diaries, and argue that in the case of Millay it is her fame and her literary prowess. Her fame I concede; her literary prowess is beyond doubt but the main problem for casual readers of this book I think is that it is not on display nearly as much as one hopes it would have been, so that only flashes of her true brilliance spring forth, the light of it mostly obscured by her more prosaic concerns.

I have often said, ‘I love Edna St. Vincent Millay.’ Of course, this isn’t strictly true. What I mean is, ‘I love Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry.’ And that is very true, although I admit that I’ve often thought that, in person, she would be… let’s just say a challenge. This book verified that. I actually really enjoyed it - Millay’s distinctive voice - which, as I said, I’ve loved for many years - was, unsurprisingly, on full display in her diary. But in the end, all I could think of was that, while I will always and forever love her poetry, I have nothing but sympathy for those unfortunate enough to love her in person.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC copy for my review.

Thank you NetGalley for a chance to read this! I admit I was a bit slow and did not download this in time, despite having a good period of time to do so!
Giving it the most common rating, which seems to be 5 stars!

Covering mainly the periods of 1907-1914, when Millay was a teenager and in her early twenties, and 1927 to 1935. Millay has a strong voice even in the first diary entries from when she was sixteen years old. She manages to be both charmingly adolescent and uncannily wise and insightful. “For in this year that had passed, I had laid down for myself two commandments. These are the two. 1. Respect thyself. 2. Be worthy of thine own respect.”
I loved reading this diary, which is well edited and organised. Millay is very good company.

I was really excited for Edna St. Vincent Millay's diary, releasing in March of this year, but found myself underwhelmed. I enjoyed her poetry deeply as a teen reading her in schools, and this diary along with other things I read later about her definitely raised questions for me. Millay was openly bisexual and antiracist as an adult, but this window shows that as a teen, she held more conservative views on her sexuality and faith and believed in deeply antiblack ideas which led into her creation of a fictional mother character based on the idea of a mammy, which I hadn't expected from her adult work. I think especially in the latter case, I wish the editor had talked more about the issues and also about her later beliefs because I think that discussing her growth repudiating racist ideas could have been a way to encourage antiracism in readers. Additionally, it would fit with the narrative alongside the author's discussion of her growth as a writer, growth that is fully reflected in her diary writing. I think this would be a good read for scholars of her work, but, as a casual reader, I found the editorial writing to be too much in some places and not enough in others. I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I got a lot more out of these diaries than I was initially expecting, being someone who is familiar, but not incredibly knowledgable about, Edna's poetry. However, I found them charming, enlightening, and thoroughly entertaining. I will absolutely be rereading sections of this book in the future that have stuck with me for their humour or wisdom.

4.5 Stars

'My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!'
--First Fig - Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

Born in 1892, this offers a glimpse of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s life from 1907, at the age of sixteen, until her passing in 1950 through the diaries she kept. Her father left shortly after her two sisters were born, and her parents divorce followed. With the help of friends and neighbors, Edna, young as she was, served as a surrogate mother. She assumed the care and control of her younger siblings as well as the household, and life went on but was understandably difficult for her. Severe illnesses affected her two sisters, one from influenza which almost took her life, and the other infantile paralysis, and they left their home and went to live with her Uncle Fred, followed by their Aunt Clara. Sometime after, they rented a cottage which offered minimal comfort - wind coming through the slats in the walls, and no indoor plumbing other than a cold water tap in the kitchen. For many of her teen years, she was left to care for her two sisters when her mother was needed in her job as a nurse. It was in this cottage that she would begin keeping a journal, and where she would write the first of her poems that would be published, ’Renascence’, in a poetry contest by The Lyric Year. As a result, she obtained a scholarship to Vassar. Five years later, the year she graduated, she would publish her first book, Renascence and Other Poems.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was the first poet that I didn’t discover through my grandfather’s love of poetry and literature. Sometime around the year I was 12, my father brought me home a slim collection of her poetry, along with another book of poetry, among them several of her poems. As much as I loved Poe and Whitman, along with others, my heart soared reading her poems, if in a different way.

I didn’t know much about her personal life, I knew that she had lived, briefly, in Greenwich Village after she graduated from Vassar, so reading this added more dimension to her and her life, a more personal, brief glimpse into who she was beyond being one of my favourite poets.

There is much of this that is filled with her happiest moments and happiest years, meeting Sara Teasdale among other poets, her first opera, traveling to Europe, the early years of her marriage, and the home that she and her husband bought in Austerlitz, New York, but there is more to her life than happy, loving moments.

There are periods where entries in her diary, diaries, are very sporadic, especially between 1914 and 1927, but overall this is a fairly thorough glimpse into her life, and her thoughts. As the years passed, and her health declined, she suffered significantly, which led to addiction issues and a loss of connection, which then led to her seeking solitude, which likely led to even more despair.

Of note is that in her first diary, begun in 1907 at the age of fifteen, she makes it clear that anyone who even dares to open these pages is subject to ’the rack, the guillotine, the axe, the scaffold, or any other form of torture…’ In the years since her death selections have been made available for ‘credentialed scholars’, but this is the first time they will be published for the general public to access.

An intimate and illuminating glimpse into Millay’s life, from relative anonymity to a famous poet whose poems touched many, a journey through a life that ended sadly.


Pub Date: 08 Mar 2022

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Yale University Press

This is a well-conceived volume for scholars of St. Vincent Millay but as a casual interested reader these are rather low key diaries. Entries are often short and while there are some comic moments, generally these aren't especially interesting. They're also quite plain in terms of prose, quite different from, for example, the journals of Sylvia Plath or Virginia Woolf. Anyone working on the author will be well served.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Yale University Press for a copy of this collection of diary entries.

The idea of too much information for certain celebrities has never really been addressed, especially in these days of all-consuming social media. Fans long to hear every studio take, every blooper reel, every first draft to understand how a celebrity that speaks so much to the watcher, reader, listener became that darn good. Occasionally there are rumbles, but the draw for people to know, or the drawer that gets filled with cash usually wins out. Journals and diaries of great artists can be a tricky thing. Personal snapshots in text about thoughts, feelings, ideas that someone puts on paper, maybe never to be touched on again, or wanted to to be forgotten are ways to find new and interesting things about our idols. So reading journals can be both enlightening, and deflating as a private world is suddenly exposed.

That said the publishing of Edna St. Vincent Millay's might be intrusive, but they are truly illuminating. Rapture and Melancholy: The Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay are edited by Daniel Mark Epstein, her a recent biographer, have a very light editing touch, only correcting some obvious mistakes and offering copious notes to explain sections that might be unclear. Covering the majority of the poet's teenage years and and later years before fame and health became less sure, the journals describe her actions, thoughts and life and what made her the poet she was. There are no major aha events, just a lot of slow moments, that seem unclear at the time, but slowly build as you read, the confidences growing, the determination to be better.

A wonderful collection not only for the casual fan, but for the serious scholar. Yes there is a particularly picking thorough the bones sense, but I don't think Millay would mind too much. Learning how a creative type found the skills and courage to present and live their art is a great thing to read, and considering the writer, you know that it will be a very good read.

A long-overdue look into the heart and writing evolution of the incandescent young Edna St. Vincent Millay. Superbly organized and compelling from first page to last.

This has been a long time coming. The publishing of journals is a little ethically dubious still, right? I mean, I thought the publishing of Kurt Cobain's journals was pretty criminal. And the formatting of the recent publication of Patricia Highsmith's journals was equally criminal - all those notations made it impossible to read. But this was good. I guess Norma finally died? If you love Vincent you get that was a dark AF joke. This review was made possible by Yale University Press and NetGalley through an ARC.

This is an excellent edition of Millay's diaries, something that I've personally been wanting for over a decade. (Millay is my favourite poet, and my younger self craved access to her diaries after reading a biography.) Epstein's organization, edits, and explanatory notes are insightful and helpful as one reads, making this volume accessible and valuable to academic and casual audiences alike. I will be recommending a purchase for our library's collection and will be pre-ordering a copy of my own!