What lips my lips have kissed : the loves and love poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay / Daniel Mark Epstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Epstein, Daniel Mark.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 1892-1950.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent.

Poets, American--20th century--Biography.

Poets, American.

Love poetry, American.

Women and literature--United States--History--20th century.

Women and literature.

United States.

History.

Love poetry, American--History and criticism.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xvii, 300 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Loves and love poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Place of Publication:

New York : Henry Holt, 2001.

Summary:

This is the story of a rare sort of American genius, a young girl from Camden, Maine, who used her pen as a key to open doors to the wider world. Raised in a female, theatrics-loving household, the sensitive child harbored a talent for words, music, and drama and an inexorable desire to be loved. When Edna St. Vincent Millay was twenty, her poetry would make her famous; at thirty she would be loved by readers the world over.

She was widely considered to be the most seductive woman of her age. Few men could resist her, and many women also fell under her spell. From the publication of her first poems until the scandal over Fatal Interview twenty years later, gossip about the poet's liberated lifestyle prompted speculation about who might be the real subject of her verses.

With a poet's insight, Daniel Mark Epstein re-creates the dramatic events and ideas that led to Millay's precocious masterpiece "Renascence," published when she was just nineteen. His detective work exposes the affair between the young poet and the middle-aged editor Arthur Hooley, who encouraged her sexual adventures at Vassar. Epstein has also discovered love letters from the poet George Dillon illuminating the romance that threatened Millay's marriage, and a cache of correspondence concerning the poet's surprising obsession and success with Thoroughbred horse racing.

Using sources that have been seen by a mere handful of people since the poet's death, Daniel Mark Epstein tells the astonishing story of the life, dedicated to art and love, that inspired the sublime lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Contents:

Part 1 Love o' Dreams

Love o' Dreams 3

Cora 5

School Days and Stage Lights 14

Little Girl Grown Up 33

Renascence 49

Part 2 The Whirlpool of Eros

The Whirlpool of Eros 71

The Sappho of North Hall 91

The Goddess 111

The Village 121

Menage a Trois 145

Europe 155

Part 3 Marriage

Marriage 167

Steepletop 187

Fatal Interview 199

The Mountain Laurels 219

Paris or Steepletop 228

The Last Love Poems 240

Challedon 248

Little Nancy 255

Courage 267.

Notes:

"A John Macrae book."

Includes bibliographical references (pages [285]-286) and index.

ISBN:

0805067272

OCLC:

46729447