Criticism > Poetry > Renascence, Edna St. Vincent Millay - Miriam Gurko (essay date 1962)

Renascence, Edna St. Vincent Millay - Miriam Gurko (essay date 1962)

Miriam Gurko (essay date 1962)

SOURCE: Gurko, Miriam. “Renascence.” In Restless Spirit: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, pp. 33-42. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1962.

[In the following essay, Gurko discusses the biographical and psychological context of Millay's poem.]

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.

—Collected Poems

With the ten dollars that Vincent had won for her graduation poem, she took a trip to Massachusetts in the summer of 1909 to visit her mother's family. Mr. Millay contributed an additional two dollars. In a long letter to Norma and Kathleen, she mentions seeing two musical...

[The entire page is 2512 words long]

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