“Let
us forget such words, and all they mean, as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor,
Greed, Intolerance, Bigotry; let us renew our faith and pledge to Man, his
right to be Himself, and free.” – Edna St. Vincent Millay.
St. Vincent Millay, who was born in
Maine on this day in 1892, won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1923 – only the
third woman to win the award in that category.
And just to show that she wasn’t a “one hit wonder,” she won the Frost
Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry 20 years later. In between, she wrote many, many great poems
and earned the accolade from fellow poet Richard Wilbur that “She wrote some of
the best sonnets of the century.”
While she grew up in Maine, she was
educated at Vassar and spent her writing life in New York City, Europe, and
during WWII in Washington, DC, where she was active in creating writing supporting
the U.S. war efforts.
Millay also wrote plays and prose
and once said, “A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the
populace with his pants down. If it is a
good book nothing can hurt him. If it is
a bad book nothing can help him.”
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