Edna St. Vincent Millay summary

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Edna St. Vincent Millay, (born Feb. 22, 1892, Rockland, Maine, U.S.—died Oct. 19, 1950, Austerlitz, N.Y.), U.S. poet and dramatist. Her work is filled with the imagery of the Maine coast and countryside. In the 1920s, when she lived in Greenwich Village, she came to personify the romantic rebellion and bravado of youth. Among her volumes are Renascence (1917); A Few Figs from Thistles (1920); The Harp Weaver (1923, Pulitzer Prize); The Buck in the Snow (1928), which introduced a more sombre tone; the sonnet sequence Fatal Interview (1931); and Wine from These Grapes (1934).

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sonnet Summary

Sonnet, fixed verse form of Italian origin consisting of 14 lines that are typically five-foot iambics rhyming according to a prescribed scheme. The sonnet is unique among poetic forms in Western literature in that it has retained its appeal for major poets for five centuries. The form seems to

poetry Summary

Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and

opera Summary

Opera, a staged drama set to music in its entirety, made up of vocal pieces with instrumental accompaniment and usually with orchestral overtures and interludes. In some operas the music is continuous throughout an act; in others it is broken up into discrete pieces, or “numbers,” separated either