Collected Sonnets

by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ruth Bornschlegel (Designed by), Norma Millay (Introduction)

More than 180 sonnets selected from Millay's books of poems -- including 20 sonnets from Mine the Harvest not contained in previous editions of her Collected Sonnets -- are brought together in this new, expanded edition. An introduction by Norma Millay, written expressly for this volume, focuses on examples of the poet's variations in sonnet structure. Here is the voice of Millay, whose prophetic vision, devotion to freedom, and intellectual daring combine with her mastery of the sonnet form to speak eloquently for the human spirit.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, 20th Century, American, Literary Fiction, Female Authors

187 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1917

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

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘I drink - and live - what has destroyed some men’

Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once wrote in a poem, ‘A poem in a difficult time / is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.’ Sometimes the words in a verse of grief—be it in a poem or a song—can also become like a pillow to cling to in grief of your own, a shared sorrow to embrace against the world, a sad beauty to get us through. The sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay are among such verses and here in her Collected Sonnets readers are given an incredible overview of her work and poetic dives into experiences of grief—‘always, with is awkward contours’— and growing older. There is a real beauty emanating from each sonnet even when it takes a hard gaze into the harshness of life as we are ‘remembering there is dying to be done’ but even amidst all that changes or fades there is still life to be lived and moments of serenity when ‘I shall find the sullen rocks and skies / Unchanged from what they were when I was young.’ A brilliant poet whom critic Harriet Monroe once called ‘the greatest woman poet since Sappho’ this volume of The Collected Sonnets is a wonderful window into the work of a writer with such an exquisite gift for examining memory and the morose while remaining beautiful in all the poetic reverberations.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a writer who was just as much a celebrity in her own life for being herself as she was for her works and her many public appearances and performances certainly helped grant her a lasting legacy. In Collected Sonnets we are given an overview of her artistic output across the years and grappling with the legacy of life looms large over the bulk of her poems, particularly with regard to love and loss. The two come intermingled in many of her poems, such as in When You, That At This Moment Are to Me, a personal favorite of mine:

When you, that at this moment are to me
dearer than words on paper, shall depart,
and be no more the warder of my heart,
whereof again myself shall hold the key;
and be no more-what now you seem to be-
the sun, from which all excellences start
in a round nimbus, nor a broken dart
of moonlight, even, splintered on the sea;
i shall remember only of this hour-
and weep somewhat, as now you see me weep-
the pathos of your love, that, like a flower,
fearful of death yet amorous of sleep,
droops for a moment and beholds, dismayed,
the wind whereon its petals shall be laid.

The poem speaks to her overbearing awareness of impermanence in life, so much so that even in the first stages of love or happiness she is waiting for the other foot to fall that brings it all topping to ruin. She is ‘fearful of death, yet amorous of sleep,’ knowing that happiness tends to be followed by loss, and a ‘lover like a flower,’ will age, will wither, will die. Death lurks around every corner in her works. ‘Here I come to look for you, my love, / Even now, foolishly, knowing you are dead,’ she writes of love that lingers beyond the grave, yet still she often finds herself thwarted by uncertainty in such situations. ‘I don’t know what to do exactly when a person dies,’ she confesses and many of her poems rain down with grief like tears upon a face. ‘Weeping I wake; waking, I weep, I weep.’ Such is life.

Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

Quite often these poems show her grappling with the harsh truth that everything will tarnish in time before fracturing and fading into oblivion. Alas, even love she says. ‘When Time and all his tricks have done their worst, / Still will I hold you dear,’ she wonders and it is a fear all of us must confront in life, wondering if the worst winds will blow a love off course or dash us upon the rocks of sorrow. Time chips away at us all and frequently she gorgeously embodies it in the spirit of seasons:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

I love the way her pristine prose captures all the waves of emotion that can crash through us within a single moment, often housing her poems in a rather gorgeous expression of time in miniature but with its doors blown open to unveil a vastness inside such as the space ‘until this cigarette has ended’ or the flash of a moment seeing the death notice of a former lover ‘Read from the back-page of a paper, say, / Held by a neighbor in a subway train.’ Each poem moves with such beauty and speaks so loudly of emotion and her voice is always crystal clear with strength, even in grief or remorse.

Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish--and men do--
I shall have only good to say of you.

Edna St. Vincent Millay once wrote ‘How first you knew me in a book I wrote, / How first you loved me for a written line,’ and so to do we readers come to embrace and enjoy her work. While I still might recommend her selected poems as a better starting point (I wrote about them here) to get a little more variety, The Collected Sonnets is as endearing as her work is enduring.

5/5

‘She had kept that kettle boiling all night long, for company.’

[Anna Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve had some dark days here and there in my life, more there than here anymore and some admittedly of my own making. Days where I allowed such hopelessness and grief to deaden my interest in everything around me. No book or tv program or even the most gorgeous day outside could hold my thoughts for more than a moment. Strangely what did hold my interest would be these sonnets. I’d read them aloud to myself. I’d highlight my favorite lines. I’d announce to the nobody that was listening, “Time does not bring relief! You all have lied who told me it would ease me of my pain!” and it wasn’t time that brought relief so much as a poet who had been there.

Even though these days I don’t dwell on my losses, I still keep the comforting Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay an arms-reach from my bed.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like Edna St. Vincent Millay, you're fine by me.

Now, I don't dispute the critics who say that Millay was a limited poet; I don't entirely disagree with those who say that Millay's "Look at what a bad girl I am! Look, look: I'm naughty, I love sex and I love talking about sex (as well as nature and, occasionally, world affairs), and I don't care what people say about me!" posturing has a limiting effect on her poetry, such that many of her poems end up saying virtually the same thing as one another. It's similar to how Ashbery's poetry is able to say more than O'Hara's, because Ashbery relies on an autobiographical persona less than O'Hara did. I don't dispute that all this is true; nonetheless, I think Millay is redeemed by her technical proficiency and her clever condensations of big meanings into elegant little turns-of-phrase. Not only is her message sympathetic and compelling, but she speaks it with impeccable eloquence. She is the sort of person who would have taken top marks in the sort of rhetoric classes they used to teach at British boys' schools, the ones that required a solid grounding in Greek and Latin.

Millay's most memorable poems are, I think, the very early love sonnets ("I shall forget you presently, my dear," "I, being born a woman and distressed," etc.), but some of the more mature and polished "Fatal Interview" sonnets are also lovable; even the political sonnets, despite the plenitude of abstract nouns they contain ("mercy," "honor," "allegiance," etc.), manage to save themselves from badness through their rhetorical strength and picturesque wordings ("The barking of a fox has bought us all....Peter warms him in the servants' hall").

[Julietta · Rating 5 out of 5]

It takes time to read these sonnets aloud enjoying their beautiful cadence and flow. It also takes a while to understand which flow over me like a babbling brook, crash unto me like waves at high tide or bury me like lava flowing from a volcano.

I readily admit that I'm not an expert at poetry, but I do know what I like and these sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay are it! Apart from the text itself, you may wish to study a little of the author's life which is fascinating. She wanted to be called Vincent from a young age and was romantically and sexually attracted to both genders. Her lifestyle was highly unusual for the time period.

Within the poems, some of my favorite themes are that of impending death and lost love. Many refer to the passing of time as causing us to become cold and unable to participate in the rigors of youth. Carpe diem, people! Here is one of my favorites as an example of how adept she is with this theme:

When we are old and these rejoicing veins
Are frosty channels to a muted stream,
And out of all our burning there remains
No feeblest spark to fire us, even in dream,
This be our solace: that it was not said
When we were young and warm and in our prime,
Upon our couch we lay as lie the dead,
Sleeping away the unreturning time.
O sweet, O heavy-lidded, O my love,
When morning strikes her spear upon the land,
And we must rise and arm us and reprove
The insolent daylight with a steady hand,
Be not discountenanced if the knowing know
We rose from rapture but an hour ago.

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

[sdw · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is nothing I love more than the sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

"Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide,
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, - so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, 'There is no memory of him here!'
And so stand stricken, so remembering him."

"I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere i forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said,but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favourite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And oaths were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far -,
Where or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking."

[Kelsie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think I can give a fair review of this because I really didn't understand the vast majority of these sonnets and that's more my lack of understanding than the fault of this collection.
I can appreciate Millay has a knack for words, it was beautifully constructed too, however I just didn't understand a lot of them.
The ones I did understand are the ones I liked, so I feel it's only fair to give it a 2 star rating.
If you like sonnets then this is probably more for you. I thought I'd give it a try because it was recommended to me.
x

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

She had kept that kettle boiling all night long, for company.

How can your heart not break, with that image in your mind?

[Sher · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Jess]

Everything I read in here was beautiful but sonnets, as poetry, don't apparently hold my attention.

[Jinni Pike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Millay's sonnets are witty, simple, elaborate, clever, morbid, gorgeous, grandiose, detailed...I could go on and on.

She will make you smirk with lines like "I drink - and live - what has destroyed some men."

She'll make you ache with:
"Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide."

You'll sigh with:
"Between the awful spears of birth and death
I run a grassy gauntlet in the sun;
And curdled in me is my central pith,
Remembering there is dying to be done."

And you'll almost think she's talking directly to you with:
"Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would note
In me a beauty that was never mine,
How first you knew me in a book I wrote,
How first you loved me for a written line."

I do feel like I know you Edna, and I definitely love you.

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

c
When we that wore the myrtle wear the dust,
And years of darkness cover up our eyes,
And all our arrogant laughter and sweet lust
Keep counsel with the scruples of the wise;
When boys and girls that now are in the loins
Of croaking lads, dip oar into the sea,--
And who are these that dive for copper coins?
No longer we, my love, no longer we--
Then let the fortunate breathers of the air,
When we lie speechless in the muffling mould,
Tease not our ghosts with slander, pause not there
To say that love is false and soon grows cold,
But pass in silence the mute grave of two
Who lived and died believing love was true.

[Mary Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Would reread, would recommend.

There are so many poems in here that strike a cord with me - I feel a kinship with Millay just from her writing. I've earmarked so many to reread and contemplate.

There's a series in the middle titled "Fatal Interview" that I just couldn't get into... perhaps it was something I couldn't identify with; perhaps I didn't understand some of the references. But it felt a little like purple prose.

[Wealhtheow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fell desperately in love with Millay after reading "First Fig" in my history textbook. Some years later, I chose my college partly based upon the fact that she had gone there. Funny, irreverant, passionate and smart, Millay's work has incredible rhythm, rhyme, and impact.

[Robin Reul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not usually one who is drawn in by poetry, but something about Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnets just cuts straight through to my soul. Not only did I thoroughly enjoy reading these, but it inspired me to want to learn more about this fascinating woman's life.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A master of the sonnet form sings of love and loss, life and death with casual eloquence, as if word were the inhalation and form the exhalation of the poet’s aspiration.

Favorite Poems:

“Dirge without Music”
“[Love Is Not All]”

[Leslie Trovato · Rating 5 out of 5]

To read nearly 200 pages of iambic pentameter is something everyone should probably do. Wow. Millay is a genius, and this witty collection of sonnets reveals a striking grace as well as feminism through her almost obsessive reflections on death, mythology, and love. Here are two (of many) which I dog-eared.

*

I shall go back again to the bleak shore
And build a little shanty on the sand,
In such a way that the extremest band
Of brittle seaweed will escape my door
But by a yard or two; and nevermore
Shall I return to take you by the hand;
I shall be gone to what I understand,
And happier than I ever was before.
The love that stood a moment in your eyes,
The words that lay a moment on your tongue,
Are one with all that in a moment dies,
A little under-said and over-sung.
But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies
Unchanged from what they were when I was young.

*

Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find
The roots of last year’s roses in my breast;
I am as surely riper in my mind
As if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed.
Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,
Call me in all things what I was before,
A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;
I tell you I am what I was and more.
My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air,
My sky is black with small birds bearing south;
Say what you will, confuse me with fine care,
Put by my word as but an April truth —
Autumn is no less on me, that a rose
Hugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

First read: 4/17/2013

Favorite Sonnets:
Time does not bring relief
Bluebeard
Love, though for this you riddle me with darts
Once more into my arid days like dew
When I too long have looked upon your face
Let you not say of me when I am old
Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this:
As to some lovely temple, tenantless
When you, that at this moment are to me
Love is not blind. I see with single eye
I know I am but summer to your heart
Pity me not because the light of day
Oh, oh, you will be worry for that word!
I shall go back again to the bleak shore
I, being born a woman and distressed
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
She had forgotten who the August night
Gazing upon him now, severe and dead
Upon this marble bust that is not I
Sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease!
The beast that rends me in the sight of all,
Night is my sister, and how deep in love,
Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
I dreamed I moved among the Elysian fields,
Sweet love, sweet thorn, when lightly to my heart
Women have loved before as I love now;
Moon, that against the lintel of the west
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
When we that wore the myrtle wear the dust
If to be left were to be left alone,
Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
Now by the path I climbed, I journey back
Time, that renews the tissues of this frame,
Thou famished grave, I will not fill thee yet,
Oh, she was beautiful in every part!-
Be sure my coming was a sharp offense
O Earth, unhappy planet born to die,



Favorite Isolated Quotes:

[Mary Soon Lee]

As the title indicates, this book contains the sonnets of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). Millay is an excellent poet and these are excellent sonnets. Yet, whenever I read more than a few in succession, the sonnet form began to lose its appeal for me. In retrospect, I wish I had picked a collection of Millay's poetry that contained a variety of forms.

A few other notes:
1. The collection includes several extended sequences, including Fatal Interview, a 52-sonnet sequence.
2. Certain subjects, particularly love and grief, recur frequently.
3. I liked the references to the natural world: animals, insects, constellations, et al.
4. Taken as a whole my favorite of the sonnets are the ones beginning "Your face is like a chamber where a king," and "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why" and "Now forth to meadow as the farmer goes" (which is a lovely sonnet about a farmer and an ant).
5. Even if a sonnet didn't appeal to me in its entirety, very often there were sections that I loved. My copy of the book is strewn with highlighter.

About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved). In the case of poetry books, for various reasons, I often omit a rating altogether.

[Michael P. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Millay's early sonnets, but after the first 45 I find them stale, flat, and unprofitable until her final sonnet sequence near the end of this book. Two of those are outstanding and the rest are OK, but not worth sharing. The lesson I take away is to find her books RENASCENCE, A FEW FIGS FROM THISTLES, SECOND APRIL, and THE HEART-WEAVER, which contain her great sonnets, in the hope that the other poems in these collections are on that level. Please keep the rest.

[Christy Baker · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I enjoy some of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry, this was a rather sparse and old, even falling apart little volume that wasn't particularly well curated, but rather felt like a highly random collection of her sonnets. It did have an index of first lines in the back, but no other indicators of order or separation between the poems.

[Mario · Rating 4 out of 5]

The collection started out strong, even impressive, but it lost steam partway through and became a little more mannered, a little more tortured, and quite a bit less grounded. It's nice enough, better to dip into than read through.

[Shayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

that was awesome. Definitely adding Edna to my list of favorite poets. I can't wait to go back and really analyze some of these sonnets

[Belle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely beautiful.

[Gregory Ashe · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Shakespeare be the king of the sonnet, Edna St. Vincent Millay is clearly the queen. Classically structures but incredibly modern. Sexy, depressing, beautiful.

[George Siehl · Rating 3 out of 5]

In these Collected Sonnets, Edna St. Vincent Millay displays amazing skill in introducing a wide vocabulary to the rigorous formula of the sonnet form: 14 lines in iambic pentameter with a complex rhyming pattern. Looking at the many, or the few, words in a given line, I found myself tapping out the syllable count, checking for the mandated count of ten. Karl Beckson's Literary Terms dictionary lists a sonnet sequence, which is what we find in this collection. Again, Millay is on the mark: "a group of sonnets...[with] a thematic link. The sonnets of such a group are usually love poems which reflect the progress of an attachment or analyze the feelings of the writer." Bingo!

Millay's speakers here are uniformly troubled, uncertain, sexually committed, if not dependent, and at times obsessed with death of the partner or themselves. This is not the ebullient Millay of "My candle burns at both ends,/ It will not last the night,/ But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends--/ It gives a lovely light." And, so began my love of her work. In Collected Sonnets she is far more somber, but equally powerful.

In concluding this collection, she maintains her foreboding tone, but broadens its from the troubles of a relationship to the fate of mankind. Here she draws from her section "Epitaph for the Race of Man," in her book, Wine from These Grapes. Here, the scope of sorrow for a couple moves to a tragedy for mankind.

The three-star ranking is given for liking the craftsmanship, but not for the tone.

[Sylvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book a couple years ago, and everytime I’m looking at my collection of books I have the urge to open it again because I think that Edna St.Vincent Millay is a beautiful poetess. This is a book I found after previously reading some of her poems and I wanted more of her. I tore out a poem and it’s been on my wall for over two years now. My name is Sylvia, so I clearly was intrigued by Sylvia Plath since we share a name. I still don’t know how fond of her I am. I discovered Anne sexton and really enjoyed her. So if you enjoy Sexton I believe you’ll also really enjoy Millay. She’s the happy medium where her poems aren’t using such old English that they’re too hard to read but they’re not like modern “poems” that are a bland minimal thing that you wonder why people even consider it poetry because you could have written it yourself, and probably in the 8th grade. I think the quality of her poems that I enjoy is that the English is elevated enough and the poem is relatable enough that she says something you understand and feel in such a beautiful and descriptive way. That’s the beauty of a poet, they put words to your feelings in ways that you couldn’t.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every poem has something that arrests your attention and a good number of them have substantially more than that. I really admire her sense of rhythm, her metaphors, and her willingness to play with form (there's a few written in tetrameter and her end rhyme patterns aren't always predictable). I inevitably read this collections years ago. I'll inevitably read it again. I actually find Millay's poems comforting despite the content not always being so.

[Aimee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where Shakespeare writes " and this gives life to thee," referring to the poem itself, for Millay it is love's memory itself that sustains:

"If in the years to come you should recall,/[...] Me long ago before the frosts had laid--/[.. ] Indeed I think this memory, even then,/ Must raise you high among the ranks of men."

Ostensibly, love, lovers, seizing the moment, replace art as the central obsession. "Take up the song; forget the epitaph."

And yet, we have these poems...

[Sarah Farr · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is something lovely and melancholy about the Millay's poetry that I find myself drawn to again and again. Her sonnets flow with a lovely ease and attention to structure that I find very appealing. Particularly poignant in this collection are those addressing love and aging. Not for everyone, but certainly worth a try if you crave something beautiful and thought-provoking.