Collected Poems Book

My mother often tells me the tale of how when I was little, I cried on looking at my parents' wedding album because I wasn't present at an event that was clearly so important to them. It is this sort of misplaced longing that Millay's poems evoke in me - I feel mild despair for not being directly associated with them, because I see so much of myself reflected back from them.

I don't want to make this review a barrage of facts, but there are certain things you should know about her. She was openly bisexual and polyamorous. She was also a renowned feminist and her marriage to Eugen Jan Boissevain saw a reversal of traditional gender roles. She was the third woman to win the Pulitzer prize in poetry. Though celebrated even when she was alive, her poetry was considered 'controversial' for its thematic exploration of female sexuality and feminism.

Mistake me not'unto my inmost core
I do desire your kiss upon my mouth;
They have not craved a cup Of water more
That bleach upon the deserts of the south;
Here might you bless me; what you cannot do
Is bow me down, who have been loved by you.

Millay's poems - whether they are about loss, love, longing, nature, war, grief, desire - all hold something clandestine and radiant transfused within them. The very structure of her poems foster a yearning - for love, for loss and for a time and place that is not ours.

Night is my sister, and how deep in love,
How drowned in love and weedily washed ashore,
There to be fretted by the drag and shove
At the tide's edge, I lie'these things and more:
Whose arm alone between me and the sand,
Whose voice alone, whose pitiful breath brought near,
Could thaw these nostrils and unlock this hand,
She could advise you, should you care to hear.

I am constantly trying to build a portrait of Millay, my favorite poet. I find myself traversing the landscapes of her poetry, looking for some immured wisdom. But like Millay's own life, her poems that are magnificent in their scope evade my understanding. So I return to her over and over again, sure to find something new each time. And despite the vast gulf of history that separates us, I look for her in the interstices, in the intermediates, in the pauses and in my own longing.


I recall a place
Where a plum-tree grew;
There you lifted up your face,
And blossoms covered you.