Barbara Dyer pens a book about spirited, nonconformist poet Edna St. Vincent Millay
Camden’s Official Historian, Barbara F. Dyer, has taken a unique approach to writing about one of the most interesting women to be raised in the Midcoast, and has produced a new booklet about the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, Through the Eyes of Vincent.
While there are a number biographies and find extensive information online about Edna St. Vincent Millay, the third woman poet to receive a Pulitzer Prize, there is no one who knows the Camden-Rockland area, nor Millay’s friends and neighbors where Millay grew up, like Barbara Dyer.
And, through her unique relationships with Millay’s classmates, Dyer has drawn upon first-hand material to create a short and concise book about the poet, who wrote eloquently during the first half of the 20th Century.
Renascence
ALL I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see:
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And—sure enough!—I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.
I saw and heard and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not,—nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire,—
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each,—then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.
Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.
Long had I lain thus, craving death,
When quietly the earth beneath
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
At last had grown the crushing weight,
Into the earth I sank till I
Full six feet under ground did lie,
And sank no more,—there is no weight
Can follow here, however great.
From off my breast I felt it roll,
And as it went my tortured soul 0
Burst forth and fled in such a gust
That all about me swirled the dust.
Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatchèd roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who's six feet under ground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave is such a quiet place.
The rain, I said, is kind to come
And speak to me in my new home.
I would I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine
Of every slanting silver line,
To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon the shower will be done,
And then the broad face of the sun
Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth
Until the world with answering mirth
Shakes joyously, and each round drop
Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.
How can I bear it; buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I shall never more behold!
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred away from you!
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd
And let the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!
I ceased; and through the breathless hush
That answered me, the far-off rush
Of herald wings came whispering
Like music down the vibrant string
Of my ascending prayer, and—crash!
Before the wild wind's whistling lash
The startled storm-clouds reared on high
And plunged in terror down the sky,
And the big rain in one black wave
Fell from the sky and struck my grave.
I know not how such things can be;
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself,
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain's cool finger-tips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealèd sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see,—
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—
I know not how such things can be!—
I breathed my soul back into me.
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb
Sent instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e'er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!
Thou canst not move across the grass
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak, however silently,
But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.
In her book, Dyer includes photos, but she mostly celebrates the lifetime of a spirited poet who could write like nobody’s business.
As the Vassar College administrator told her, although Millay constantly upset the college with her rule-breaking, he would never expel her.
“He did not want a banished Shelley on his doorstep,” wrote Dyer.
“The material came from interviewing many of her friends and classmates 30 years ago, when many were in their late 90s,” wrote Dyer, in her introduction. “They told some stories about the whole town of Camden, but that is not included in this story, written in the first-person style. Since this was written, two other books about Edna St. Vincent Millay were written because they had access to her diaries in the Library of Congress. Enjoy reading a short story about a complex, talented woman.”
Millay was born in Rockland in 1892. She was only 19 when she published one of her most famous poems, “Renascence,” and one near and dear to the hears of Midcoast Maine.
In Dyer’s book, we get a true understanding of why Millay wrote that famous poem, and how it catapulted her into the modern literary world.
Her independent spirit and gumption carried her forward.
“Many times I did upset Vassar College, because I was not used to rules and regulations,” writes Dyer, using Millay’s voice.
She published poetry, plays, political writings, and a libretto for an opera. She toured the country and gave readings, and she recited poetry over the radio to support the war effort.
In 1923, she received a Pulitzer prize for her work.
The following are a few excerpts from Dyer’s book.
“On Feb. 22, 1892, Cora and Henry Millay became proud parents of a perfectly formed, tiny girl (me) with strawberry-blond hair and gray-green eyes. Perhaps the red hair came from the Irish background of my grandfather Millay and his two brothers, who came from Ireland aboard a pirate ship.”
“While I attended Camden High School on Knowlton Street, we lived in an apartment directly across the road from it. During study periods, my friends loved to run across the road to our home, not only because it was messy, but so full of magazines, books and music.”
“To most people in Camden, we appeared to live a Bohemian-type lifestyle. Mother carried on working as a practical nurse again. That meant leaving us for a week or two at a time. She instructed us girls to leave the dishes in the sink, the beds unmade and floors not swept... as long as we listened to music, played the piano, read books or wrote poetry. What a choice!”
“I used to arise early every morning and scurry up the mountain in the dark. All alone, I could be at the top and watch the sun rise over Camden. I loved the place, but wanted to beyond those mountains and woods.”
To get a copy of Dyer’s wonderful book about Edna St. Vincent Millay, visit the Reading Corner, Main Street, downtown Rockland, or The Owl & The Turtle, Bay View Street, Camden; or call Dyer, 236-3104; e-mail barbaradyer820@yahoo.com.
It sells for $15, plus .83 sales tax.
Enjoy. You won’t be disappointed!
