Olivia Gatwood Introduces Readers to Edna St. Vincent Millay

Years after her first writing residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts, Olivia Gatwood invites Literary Hub readers to learn more about Edna St. Vincent Millay. Gatwood's introduction graces a selection of Millay's poetry. "Edna St. Vincent Millay took an interest in poetry early in life, publishing her first poem at age fourteen in St. Nicholas Magazine, a publication for young people," Gatwood begins. More: 

She was encouraged by her mother to pursue the craft, eventually publishing several more poems toward the end of her teenage years. “Renascence” (1912), the title poem in her breakout collection, brought Millay her first acclaim as a writer. The poem is significantly less carnal than her later work but preludes the feeling that Millay would become famous for articulating—an urgent need to lessen the space between the individual body and everything around it, a primal hunger to grasp it all at once.

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.

In a contest put on by The Lyric Year, the poem took fourth place, a result that many readers and even contestants believed to be unjust, which attracted a loyal fan base to Millay’s work.

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