Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
by Nancy Milford

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Book Reviews of Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Book Review: Promiscuity and tenderness
Summary: 5 Stars

What really motivated me to buy this book were student questions about Millay's life that I couldn't answer based on the meager materials I had at hand; for example, 'Why did Millay's mother ask Millay's father to leave the family?' and 'How could Millay write such tender poetry when she was so promiscuous?'

I'm glad to say that this book provided answers to these and many other questions I'd never have thought to ask. Milford's work helps the reader begin to know the very complex personality behind the poetic genius and tenderness - as well as the nymphomania and utter self-centeredness. Millay had electrifying charm, and it probably is very difficult not to use this to personal advantage when one has it.

Milford also delves into some of the origins underlying Millay's life choices by describing her family life and relationships in considerable detail. Since a very young age, Millay had to be the strong one who held things together in her family, and she was perhaps never able to find someone strong enough to look after *her* in the same way - she held the upper hand in almost every relationship she had, and this paved the way for abuse of her formidable personal power.

Millay was so indulged by the world and herself that she must have felt either invincible or simply fatalistic as she slid ever more deeply into what could only be called debauchery, and later serious chemical dependence.

The side biographies interwoven into the book are fascinating as well - how Millay's husband Eugen consciously chose to indulge and put up with Millay as a path to his own self-realization, which he built on the excitement of being near the vortex of Millay's poetic and emotional tempests. There are George Slocombe and George Dillon, two men who succeeded in truly captivating Millay for extended periods of time. And then there's the ongoing comic relief provided by descriptions of the author's interactions with Millay's one surviving (at the time of the writing) sister Norma, who in spite of a disinclination to write otherwise once penned a quite brilliant sonnet in a desperate - and successful - attempt to get Edna's attention when Edna was largely ignoring her. Norma later expressed anger at 'what it took' just to get Edna to answer her letters. And then there's the different levels of competition among the four Millay women, Edna, her mother Cora, who also aspired to being a poet, Norma, who reluctantly provided the author with access to Edna's papers, and the youngest sister Kathleen, who wrote very good poetry that came at the wrong moment from the wrong family.

This book is exhilarating. It's just the kind the more mundane among us read to find out about lives we will never and would never ourselves live.

Summary of Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Authors Books

• Books > Subjects > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature
• People, A-Z > ( M ) > Millay, Edna St. Vincent
• Specific Groups > Women
• Literature & Fiction > United States > History & Criticism
• Women's Studies > Women Writers