What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay

by Daniel Mark Epstein

This is the story of a rare sort of American genius, who grew up in grinding poverty in Camden, Maine. Nothing could save the sensitive child but her talent for words, music, and drama, and an inexorable desire to be loved. When she was twenty, her poetry would make her famous; at thirty she would be loved by readers the world over.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was widely considered to be the most seductive woman of her age. Few men could resist her, and many women also fell under her spell. From the publication of her first poems until the scandal over Fatal Interview twenty years later, gossip about the poet's liberated lifestyle prompted speculation about who might be the real subject of her verses.

Using letters, diaries, and journals of the poet and her lovers that have only recently become available, Daniel Mark Epstein tells the astonishing story of the life, dedicated to art and love, that inspired the sublime lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Genres: Poetry, Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, American History, Memoir

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[El · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had been reading this alongside The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Nancy Milford's biography, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay because I am a nerd and that's what I do. I originally planned to read whichever biography was published first, so I could see a progession in the information the biographers obtained over the years. But it turned out both the Epstein and the Milford biographies were published in 2001, which meant I had to read them simultaneously. Hush now; my life is hard.

I'm not sorry I did it this way, though I found that it's not really fair to compare them. Savage Beauty covers the minutiae of Millay's life, so it's thicker, and Milford had the occasion to talk with Millay's younger sister, Norma. Epstein did not get to sit with Norma, who died in the mid-late 80s, but he managed to cover a lot of the same ground. His information was obtained primarily through extensive studying at the Library of Congress where a lot of Millay's artifacts are now housed.

Additionally unfair to compare them: Milford's biography specifically has the subtitle "The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay"; Epstein's subtitle is "The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay". They're not quite the same biography. Epstein's focus was more on Millay's lovers over the years (holy cats, did she have a few) and how those relationships affected your poetry. Again, Milford covers some similar ground which isn't unusual since it all is important in understanding Millay as a person and a writer, but she also wrote more about every other aspect of her life.

Epstein actually discussed at least one relationship that Milford did not - Salomon de la Selva. Perhaps Norma Millay didn't know about that relationship, or it was a hush-hush/taboo subject in the family. Who knows. But Epstein wrote about it. In fact he went so far as to say "No account of Millay's love life during the Vassar years (and after) would be complete without mention of the Nicaraguan poet Salomon de la Selva." (p112)

But I'm finding that Milford really picks and chooses her topics, for a reason I have not yet determined, whereas Epstein preferred to throw it all out there. He wrote about some topics in a page and a half when Milford wrote about the same topics in full chapters. I'm not saying one approach is better than the other, but there it is.

The one issue I do have with Epstein's biography is primarily towards the end of the book, around the time Edna gets married to Eugen Boissevain. She did not really take his last name, yet Epstein continued to refer to the couple as the "Boissevains". She kept her last name, if for not other than professional reasons, and I think it was presumptuous of Epstein to refer to her as anything other than Millay. He even included a signature from one of Millay's letters to her mother: "Edna St. Vincent Millay Boissevain. P.S. This is the first time I have writ my name in the above screamingly funny manner. I do not intend to do it often, but it is fun." (p180)

Other than that, the biography was fine. Millay led an interesting and salacious life. Her relationship with Arthur Ficke was heartbreaking in the way that most relationships that can never "be" are heartbreaking. They were each other's soul mates, if you will, and there's something annoyingly touching about that. Millay led a life that allowed her to be soul mates with several different men and women - she had a sort of magnetic quality about her that almost required that everyone fall in love with her. But Ficke was likely her best friend throughout the rest of their lives, a relationship that Millay's husband allegedly understood and respected.

Letters between Millay and Ficke, 1921

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautifully written biography about one of the most remarkable female poets. it takes us through her life from early on, so detailed, so visual, to her death, and all the craziness and wild nights in between.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Edna St. Vincent Millay, and although I thought Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford had a better flow, Mark Epstein uses a cache of unpublished letters and journals to frequently incorporate Millay's own voice into the pages. What a whirlwind life Vincent had! It was a joy to go on the roller coaster ride with her again.

[Joy H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! I enjoyed it more than the other popular biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay, (_Savage Beauty_ by Nancy Milford). I felt that it gave more insight into her life than Milford's book did.

[Lise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Think I enjoyed this more than the Milford biography -- it felt more personal, and answered more questions I had about the genesis of certain poems. (Learning that, for example, "at least you did not live to see me die" was actually written when Millay's mother died, never published, and then *revised* posthumously by Norma Millay to make it sound like it was about Eugen's death...)

Gotta say, when Epstein talks about the biographer who was loaned a trunk full of letters from George Dillon in the 1980s and then *lost* them... that can only be Milford, right?

The chapter about Millay's obsession with horse racing was also illuminating, and shed light on an aspect of her personality I never would have guessed at!

[Meredith Lipscomb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite Millay biography (and I've read them all.) She was such an interesting person, in the vanguard of so much that was about to happen politically, culturally, literarily and yet she's just an average girl with all the faults and foibles that an average girl has. I suppose that's what makes her so interesting?

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Facinating historial read about Edna St. Vincent Millay. Recommended to me as (1) a book to read about the struggles of identity as a woman, and (2) a book whose prose demonstrates that a biographer can fall in love with his/her subject even after death.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exciting account of poet Edna St Vincent Millay's life and writing. Millay emerges as a bold feminist with radical views. Her poetry is deeply moving and passionate.

[Sheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second biography of Millay, having taken on the massive Milford book during quarantine.
I enjoyed this one quite a bit more, for a few reasons. Chiefly because Epstein works from a cache of unpublished letters and some diary entries at the Library of Congress, giving some more intimate glimpses into Vincent's love life/love lives. Nancy Milford worked primarily from papers that had been filtered through Vincent's sister Norma, who definitely had thoughts on how her sister should be presented to the world. Consequently, there are some relationships and obsessions (horse racing!?!?) examined in depth that don't appear at all in Milford's seemingly comprehensive book.
Secondly, it is clear early on that just like the many poets and lovers he talks about, Daniel Epstein is in love with his subject. This might be a liability for some, but his sometimes rapturous tone made it all the more compelling for me.
My main criticism of the book stems from this same adoring attitude though--Epstein often slips into storytelling that is straight up fantasy, often salaciously "reporting" on bedroom details that he can have no evidence on which to base them. Not that I think his conclusions are wrong, but I found myself having to step out of the narrative sometimes to say "wait a minute! You can't possibly know that!" This didn't really color my enjoyment of the book, in fact, it was a positive. Sort of a "reality TV" biography, perfect vacation reading.

[Laura Foti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful biography. You finish feeling like Edna SVM was your own charismatic, magnetic, infuriating friend.

[Katie R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent biography and what a fascinating subject. I felt like I was walking with the author just a few steps behind ESVM... This biography was very narrow, but I found it more engaging and informative with such specific direction.

This was published more than 20 years ago, so I can't wait to read what's been found out since! As well as get my hands on some collected poems.

[T.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A much better written book than "Savage Beauty." Epstein was a more neutral witness to Millay's life and his prose is more eloquent than that of the other biography that came out at about the same time.

[Margaret Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Nancy Milford's "Savage Beauty," I found a lot of the content repetitious and certainly some discrepancies of facts.

[BookDragon]

Uhh

[Sher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Melds biography as a way explaining what Millay wrote about and explores her poetic accomplishments. A tragic, self-absorbed life.

[Pat Heitmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Epstein’s style of writing and manner of revealing the life.

[Kristen Iler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disappointed in the plot at the end but I guess that's not really the author's fault.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew this book wouldn't get anything less than three stars from me, because it's a biography of Millay. Unfortunately, it isn't a very good biography of Millay.

I was skeptical from the moment I read the title. Why "the loves and love poems"? Is this a biography of Millay, or of the men she was involved with? Even if Epstein was all about alliteration, why not title it "the life and love poems"? Epstein is nigh obsessed with Millay as a love poet - which she is, but he passes over many of her most beautiful poems (notably missing: "Dirge Without Music" [!!!], "On Thought in Harness," "Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree") to get as quickly as he can to the poems he can easily read as the most salacious, the most titillating, the most feminine.

That's the big problem with this book, I think. Epstein constantly writes about Millay's carefully-constructed feminine charms, and it seems like somewhere along the way he got caught up in the fantasy he imagined she lived. I've never seen the subject of a biography referred to more often as a "goddess." Even when Epstein tries to play it off as ironic, it doesn't work. He seems to see Millay as a series of poses rather than as a person.

Despite his obvious respect for her poetry, he's obsessed with her as a "femme fatale." He describes her callous love affairs in her early years in great detail, but refers to the other parts of her life - such as her deep abiding love for her friends and family - almost as an afterthought. He minimizes the work she put into her poetry, unless, of course, it was love poetry. He adores picking apart her love poetry in relation to the men she was seeing at the time. He makes absurd attempts to reconstruct clandestine meetings with male lovers, but completely skips over her love affairs with women as flings or childish flirtations. A proposed marriage to a friend, which reads in other biographies as a nuanced and complex love triangle wrecked by poor communication and bad timing, becomes a strange comedy of Millay's manipulation and her friend's gullibility. He constantly minimizes her political poetry, or at least the impulses that led her to write it.

Even worse, as Millay grows older, he seems to almost delight in describing the femme fatale's fall from grace. He constantly ascribes Millay's drug and alcohol problems to despair over losing her beauty, her lovers, etc, etc, instead of to, you know, mental illness and addiction. In fact, the second half of the book is much weaker than the first. Only the very brief chapter about Millay's breeding of racehorses stands out.

All in all, this is not a great, or even very good, biography. Read Nancy Milford's Savage Beauty, which, though longer and more technical, is much, much better. This is only good for the small bits of information that Epstein includes that Milford didn't (both biographies were released in the same year). Even then, Milford includes much that Epstein didn't, and doesn't feel the need to force Millay to strike poses every other chapter.

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

In full disclosure, this is the only Millay bio I’ve read, so I’m not sure how it compares to any others. I’d rate myself as moderate fan of her sonnets; a more enthusiastic fan might find the very elements I’m complaining about here to be strengths…

Throughout the bio, Epstein includes some (perhaps all?) juicy stuff, which is cool with me, but he seems to also include everything else, which I often found tedious. (I know it’s not very scholarly to admit this, but just because a person’s work is important and interesting, it does not necessarily follow that every component of that person’s life is important or interesting). For instance, most of part 2, “The Whirlpool of Eros,” is highly skimmable. A good deal of this section recounts the love triangle between Millay, her husband, and one of her poet-dude-sex-buddies. The situation and it ramifications really are interesting, but I felt like the needle kept skipping— the back and forth correspondence is pretty much all the same (Lover/husband: “Vincent, you are amazing and I love you and only you.” Vincent: “I love you too…plus others.”) Even though a good deal of correspondence is burnt, lost, buried, etc., that which Epstein presents seems comprehensive to the point of being exhaustive and tedious. (I’d like to add that it turns out I pretty much already knew the basics of her life/relationships before reading this, which might explain —maybe excuse?— my impatience with Epstein.)

I appreciate Millay’s life and poems, and wanted to like this bio. I underlined and nodded to all kinds of stuff in the preface, like: “Millay was one of the last important American poets to hold the devoted interest of the serious general reader—that is, the reader who is not a professor, critic, or poet....By the last half of the twentieth century few were left to read poetry but ‘professionals’ and bored, reluctant students.” The preface seems to be interested in the relationship between Millay and her audience, but it’s not much of a concern for the rest of the book (I kept waiting for it to be!).

The preface also asks, “How did it happen that the professors who made spacious rooms in the cannon… for poets who addressed every theme but romantic love could find no corner for the woman who sang…the delights and the torments of eros—our most illustrious love poet?” Another question I’m interested in, but I'm dissapointed in Epstein's response. Unlike the poet-reader relationship question, he does actually acknowledge and imply an answer to this question, but it's what I'd call an "easy out"--the frustratingly oversimplified report that the poetry world was/is threatened by women, and that's just how it is.

I guess we just don’t see eye-to-eye about what’s interesting, Epstein & me. In the end, I’d rather have spent the time re-reading her Collected Sonnets .

[Book Riot Community]

Edna St. Vincent Millay became my personal hero after I read her biography. Admittedly, from its title, a bio that focuses on the love affairs of this fantastic writer of beautiful poetry. Millay was, like Hurston, like Duncan, surrounded in mystery, and the biography confirms that, yes, she was bisexual, and had a 25-year open relationship – an open relationship! In the 1920s! And she wasn’t stoned to death, or boycotted, or even shunned. She was adored, she was sensuous in a way that perfectly matched her writing, she was seductive, a brilliant writer, a benefactress later in life, and a role model of sorts to other aspiring writers – men and women. Growing up in poverty, caring for her younger siblings and scraping by, soon Millay was the toast of the literary scene, living the high life with a husband, a writing place of her own out in the country, friends in high places and critically acclaimed poetry.

Verdict: BUY, and then keep it under lock and key so you’ll always have it nearby, for inspiration (personal and lyrical). My copy is lost to the world, but you still have a shot. Buy your book, and then hold onto it as if your life depended on it.

(From Buy, Borrow, Bypass: Biographies of Women from the 1920s, Roaring by Alison Peters: http://bookriot.com/2014/12/08/buy-bo...)

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty goofily written biography of one of my faves. There is a lot of purple prose, and Epstein seems pretty clearly to have fallen in love and in lust with his subject. (Dig his passages about the naked pictures of her that can be found at the Library of Congress.) Exclamation points litter the page, and he earnestly (can it be possible?) discusses some of the leading players' star signs and how these astrological dimensions contributed to their passion. Needless to say, I found this silly.

So, why am I three-starring this book? Well, the salacious detail, even where speculative, is compelling, making it a good (summer) read if not a great book. Also, Millay's life story is just fascinating and sometimes legitimately heart-breaking. The best way to learn about it / read about it is Nancy Milford's far superior book Savage Beauty , but if you don't have the time or the interest to read a tome that long, this provides a kind of bodice-ripper version of the life and times of the poet. Which is fun and compelling in its own right.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poetic genius, Millay enjoyed the books her mother provided her and her sisters encouraging them to read and study. Her intelligence exasperated her elementary school teachers and she entered high school early. Though known for her poetry, Millay also acted and wrote plays. Though Erato is the muse of poetry, it seemed Eros was an equal or greater player in her life. Much of her poetry is love poetry which was best when she was in 'love'. During her teen years and her time at Vassar she enjoyed having affairs with women but also had affairs with men. After college it was mainly men she provided her favors to but did not let the men control her affairs. Hers was an open marriage during which she had affairs that stimulated Erato. Unfortunately, as she was getting older, losing her physical attraction to men, she turned to drugs and alcohol aging her more rapidly.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very readable book, written both with sensitivity toward the subject and appreciation for the poems. It could have been sensationalized; it was not. Epstein was the first to have access to a large cache of Millay papers at the Library of Congress which became available after her sister died in the late 1980s. He is sympathetic to everyone involved at all times, and gives a particularly moving portrait of Millay's husband and the enduring nature of their marriage, as well as the sadness of her gradual decay due to alcoholism and opiate abuse. The connection of her work to the relationships in her life gives color and complexity to the poetry. I would read this again someday, or put it on my shelf next to the little paperback of her sonnets.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't normally read biographies, but this one caught my eye. I was teaching poetry and I was looking for resources to get my students excited about poetry.

I did not realize that Edna St. Vincent Millay was such a prolific writer of sonnets (one of the only poet since Shakespeare to write a significant number of them). The title poem is a lovely one, in which Millay reflects on her many lovers. I also did not realize what a free spirit she was, at a time when women were not encouraged to celebrate their sexuality. Go Edna!

The book inspired me to read more of her work.

[mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a great book well researched and authentic

[Sterling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to get through; I've been putting this book down occasionally to pick something else up for a break. It has been worth it though to learn about this unique and amazing woman. Epstein biographies Millay so well I would recommend this to anyone even slightly interested in her life story and what inspired her timeless lyrics.

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most incredibly intoxicating books I have ever read. Simply devoured it! None can rival Daniel Mark Epstein's tender intuitiveness, nor his mesmerizing poetic sensibilities. The ethereal Edna St. Vincent Millay is poignantly portrayed here in all her complexity. A feast for the reader who loves Millay's intricate matrix of emotion.

[Juliana Ormsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had always admired Edna St.Vincent Millay's poetry but did not know much about her personal life. Daniel Mark Epstein presents a comprehensive, honest, and very entertaining biography of this bold poet. Much to my surprise, Millay had a very steamy, unconventional love life which will appeal to the modern reader.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything about this book is brilliant. I mean, that title. Such a great choice, because let's be honest: we're talking about a lot of lips; so of all the lines from her poems that could have been used, that one seems most appropriate. Part biography and part literary criticism, this book is a must-read for all lovers of Millay's work.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always loved Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry but now I am totally obsessed with her! I had no idea she was such an immense celebrity in her day. It's sad that it seems not many people today have even heard of her.