Poems: Edna St Vincent Millay

This volume includes her early poems that many consider her best - ‘Renascence’ and ‘The Ballad of the Harp Weaver’ among them - as well as favourites such as ‘What lips my lips have kissed’ and ‘First Fig’ ( My candle burns at both ends … ). The poet’s most famous verse drama, the one-act anti-war fable Aria da Capo, is included here as well.

One of America’s best-loved poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) burst onto the literary scene at a very young age and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. Her passionate lyrics and superbly crafted sonnets have thrilled generations of readers long after the notoriously bohemian lifestyle she led in Greenwich Village in the 1920s ceased to shock them. Millay’s refreshing frankness and cynicism and her ardent appetite for life still burn brightly on the page more than half a century after her death.