Statues: The People They Salute
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna, 🤔 the name doesn’t spur thoughts of a person who was out of the main stream...even the phrase “out of the main stream” in my opinion has come to sound main stream 😉 anyway...the person I am posting my reflections about is Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Few would argue that the addition of “St. Vincent Millay” doesn’t add a sense of drama to “Edna” 😊 I recently read a book review about a book based on Edna St. Vincent Millay’s diaries. The review reminded me that I had heard the name before, but knew nothing about the person behind the name.
The name brought to mind a stamp that commemorated the woman for a reason that escaped my mind. Of course, this made me curious to learn more...
Well, I researched a bit and found some discoveries I’d like to share...
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on February 22,1892 in Rockland, Maine. Her unusual middle name, “St. Vincent” was chosen by her mother because, when her mother's young brother, a sailor, was seriously injured during a storm at sea, he was nursed back to health at St. Vincent's Hospital. Cora Millay decided to name her daughter after the institution that saved her brother.
Two more daughters were born to Cora and Henry Millay, but the marriage fell apart over Henry’s addiction to gambling. Edna was eight years old when her parents divorced. Cora moved around with her daughters for a few years, boarding with relatives. By 1903, the family finally settled in a small rented house in Camden, Maine. Cora supported them without the help of Edna's father by working many hours as a practical nurse.
Cora had a passion for music and literature and wanted to educate her children to love it also. She succeeded in that...her daughters had quite a bit of household chores, but loved to sing around the piano after dinner or act out plays together before going to bed. Edna later described her childhood as extraordinarily happy and said, "It never rained in those days."
Edna St. Vincent Millay grew up in beautiful surroundings. She loved nature and captured it in words. She entered her poem “Renascence” in a poetry contest, and although she did not win the contest, her poem gained her a lot of positive attention. She even drew the attention of a wealthy arts patron Caroline B. Dow, who sponsored her at Vassar College.
There is a lot more to say about Edna, her poetry, her activism for women’s right to vote, and non traditional lifestyle...I’ll post more snippets in the days to come, but for now I’ll post the first two stanzas of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Renascence” written when she was 19 years old and published in 1917. Check the comments for the link to the entire poem which is worth the read (p.s. I’m not a big poetry fan, but some poems do touch my soul, and this was one of them 😉❤️)
All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
I even found a statue! Pictured above is a bronze statue of Edna St. Vincent Millay looking out into the harbor. Sculpted by Robert Willis, the statue was unveiled in 1989 and stands along Camden's waterfront, in the Harbor Hill Park. Below is a picture of a stamp saluting her 😉 and a photo of her as a young woman.
Here’s the link to read the rest of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s beautiful poem “Renascence” ❤️
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55993/renascence
Diana Erbio is a freelance writer and author of “Coming to America: A Girl Struggles to Find her Way in a New World”. Visit her on Facebook and read her blog series “Statues: The People They Salute” .