Conversation At Midnight

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

"A sequence of poems that gives daring and provocative expression in dialogue to the thought of our times." -- from the cover

Genres: Poetry, Classics

126 pages, Book

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work.

This famous portrait of Vincent (as she was called by friends) was taken by Carl Van Vechten in 1933.

Reviews

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m a fan of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry, so when I ran across a quotation of a few lines from this book, I decided to check it out. It’s an eighty-five-year-old stage play in verse, recounting the after-dinner talk of Ricardo, a wealthy sophisticate with a townhouse in Greenwich Village, and his six dinner guests. Since the far-ranging snippets touch on many political and social issues of the time, eight years into the Great Depression and on the eve of World War Two (with war already underway in China, Ethiopia, and Spain), I was prepared for much of the dialogue to be dated. This was less the case than I expected (sad to say).
Instead, the weakness lies in the characters. They are types, not persons: A stockbroker, a poor poet blindly defending Stalin, a frustrated fine artist who gets by on portrait commissions, a writer of short stories, a priest, and a young advertising copywriter. The exchanges, particularly heated between the broker and the poet, yield few surprises, and I didn’t notice any character development.
I was fascinated that Millay assembled an all-male group. This struck me even before the extended disquisition on the foibles of women that opened Part Two.
As for the writing: some of it, particularly the soliloquies written as sonnets, was fine. Millay displays a gift for aphorism. In addition to the lament that Babel is here and now that led me to read this, there is this on the economy: “I’m beginning to wonder what the hell / We buy that’s half so precious as what we sell.” Or this: “Hypocrisy is not to be despised, it is the pimp of Empire, but it presupposes / The existence in the community of a spiritual force for good, that must be courted and betrayed / Into connivance with evil before the planned step can be made.” As contemporary as the run-up to the Iraq War.

[Hc Mark]

HALF WAY THROUGH AND AM HAVING TROUBLE KEEPING THE CHARACTERS STRAIGHT -- THEY SEEM TO ALL HAVE THE SAME POINT OF VIEW -- DISILLUSIONED BY THE USA 20TH CENTURY -- VERY CLEAVER CONVERSATION THOUGH -- IS IT POETRY? -- CAN'T SAY I KNOW MUCH ABOUT THAT -- BUT IT DOES HAVE NICE RHYTHM -- ALL IN ALL A VERY INTERESTING WORK AND WORTH READING -- ONE MORE THING THE VERY RICH AMERICANS SOUND LIKE ENGLISHMEN BUT I WONDER IF THEY WERE DISILLUSIONED WITH ALL THEIR ILL GOTTEN GAINS IN THE EARLY THIRTIES -- DON'T THINK SO -- OR SO MUCH -- THEY WALLOWED IN IT !

BUT WHAT DO I KNOW?

HC M

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had put off reading this as i am not a fan of poetry or religion but it turned out to be just what the title indicated . A conversation between 7 men at midnight around 1937. Men with very different backgrounds, politics , religious views, and thoughts on life in general. Yes there was much written in the form of poems but most was just dialogue. The parts about Hitler, Mussolini, and Marx were of particular interest to me. as was comparing democratic gov to socialist . I marked many passages to be able to go back to later.

[Catharine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made a huge impression on my as a young adult, although I hardly remember the content now.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting. I've never seen poetry done this way before. Reads like a play with poetic style.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I have no idea what that whole book was about. It was a play, so maybe I can find a reading of it somewhere. Even if not, I'm going to dig around for some reviews, criticism, what-have-you and hope to find some clarification about what, exactly, it was about.

[Kellie Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was strange. I didn't get a lot of the references. I liked how much it rhymed and some of the funny couplets.