Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay [Paperback]

Edna was a complex character. Secure in her great talent, but so very insecure in most other areas of her life. Her difficult childhood, her time at Vassar, her relationships with family, friends and lovers and her difficulties later in life make for a life story that is completely irrestible to people who enjoy good biographical writing, whether one likes poetry or not.

'Savage Beauty' is one of the best biographies I have read in years. I couldn't put it down, nor can I stop thinking about Edna and her strange life.

The title of this book is misleading. Ms. Millay actually displayed the qualities of a diamond, rough before cutting, able to slash painfully through flesh after being cut, the polished gem attracting the eye of all beholders in the light, a lasting beauty in its brilliance, and a coldness in its center even as it displays fire.

Poetry was Ms. Millay's route out of a life she did not care for (nor would many people), but was a demanding mistress that took all of her strength to serve. To serve the muse, she put little investment in personal relationships, except to grasp the pleasures she continuously and indiscriminately lusted for. To provide for the fine lifestyle and clothes she preferred, the poetry had to grasp a mass audience -- something that poetry seldom does. With a flair for performance, and a preference for suggesting unbridled freedom, Ms. Millay drew enormous reading and lecture audiences even in the midst of the great Depression of the 1930s.

The book's strength is its access to many private papers kept by Ms. Millay's surviving sister, Norma. The way these papers are used is also the book's major weakness. Ms. Millay, perhaps because of her pain, alcoholism and drug addiction in her later years, left behind many papers that one would assume she had not intended for the world to see published. Going through these papers as they are reported in Savage Beauty is like going through the dirty underwear of someone who wasn't very careful about being clean. I, for one, would have preferred not to know as much about the debauchery of her personal life.

To me, a biography of a poet should have the poetry at the center. Many people live amoral and immoral lives. Seldom do we read biographies about them for that purpose. Ms. Milford partially succeeds in keeping poetry in the book. Many of Ms. Millay's poems are included in the book. There are also a few where you can see how the process of editing occurred. There are also poems written by Ms. Millay's poet friends that were directed at her. Occasionally, you will also find the comments that critics made. At other times, Ms. Milford connects a particular poem to a specific event or a person in Ms. Millay's life.

What is missing is a thoughtful treatment of what's good and bad about the poetry. If you are like me, you will find it very uneven. Three soaring lines may be followed by two that don't work nearly as well.

Throughout the book, the reader is told that Ms. Millay had a most remarkable voice, and that even she was surprised to hear a recording of her own reading. One would have thought that a CD would have been included with Ms. Millay reading her own work. If that were not possible, surely another poet could have been persuaded to read in a style similar to Ms. Millay's so that we could experience the full power of this most oral of all writing forms. I was disappointed that no such recording was made available with the book.

Compared to the average nonfiction book, Savage Beauty is a long work. Much of that length is wasted on sharing unending details that make the same point. In some cases, long sections build up a point and then fail to finish it. For example, there's a lot about Ms. Millay's illnesses. You find out that she is having headaches and cannot see. Doctors are consulted, treatments are tried, and nothing is working. And then you don't hear anything about it again for 80 pages. Weird! In another place, one of Ms. Millay's sisters accuses Ms. Millay of stealing ideas from her, a most serious charge. Almost nothing is said about the truth or falseness of this.

To me, the most interesting part of the book was how a poor girl with limited education from a small town in Maine essentially raised her two sisters alone (while her mother did nursing work away from home for weeks at a time) and became a world-famous poet. The background of her family and her first poetic success, for Renascence, (in a magazine's poetry contest, which her mother also entered) were quite remarkable.

Ms. Milford asked Charlie Ellis, husband of Ms. Millay's sister, Norma, if there had been a trait that the three Millay sisters shared equally. "He answered in a flash: 'Yes. They were nasty, everlastingly.'" You will get that impression, too. Where many readers enjoy admiring the subjects of biographies, readers of this biography will probably mostly end up admiring the poetry rather than the poet. If that concerns you, perhaps you should read a book of Ms. Millay's poetry instead.

The biography has another quirk. There is a running dialogue between the author and Ms. Norma Ellis throughout the book. Sometimes that dialogue draws out a point. Many other times, it just seems out of place and distracting.

After you finish this book, think about what you would like to be remembered for. What criticisms could be made of how you live? How will you memory influence the lives of future generations?

Seek to create beauty in your work, and in your relations with others!