by Alexandra Dorian

Created on: August 26, 2008

"My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night; but ah my foes and oh my friends it gives a lovely light." - Edna St. Vincent Millay

The above quote is recognizable by most, but not many may be able to attribute the line to one of American literature's most revered poets. Maine, and its great stoic landscape, was forever immortalized in the writing and poetry of one of its most famous daughters. Edna St. Vincent Millay. Although she may be best known for raising debauchery and recklessness in Greenwich Village and Vassar College in New York, Millay came from humble beginnings in rural Maine before she went on to captivate the literary world with her skill.

In the depths of February 1892, Edna was born to a nurse and a schoolteacher in a tiny coastal town. Her parents were together for only a few short years of her childhood before her mother picked up her and her two sisters and settled in Camden, Maine, just on the Penobscot Bay. It was here, in a modest house and with basic education that Millay, preferably called Vincent, honed and crafted her delicate writing style.

Millay can attribute much of her early success to her northern home state. Winters in Maine are long and brutal. The sun is a rare commodity once the days start growing darker, and certainly at a time when technology was still primitive, this could leave any impressionable young girl with deep feelings of restlessness. Millay longed to venture beyond the Penobscot, but with a working single mother, this was not an easily realized aspiration. Nevertheless, Vincent excelled in school. She was a fiery character, not easily yielding to authority, but a very good student.

She first found her literary foothold writing for her school publications, the children's magazine St. Nicholas, and local newspapers. Edna was often older than the target demographic for the St. Nicholas, but she often won prize money and her writing was often the most compelling. It was not until Millay channeled her surroundings and her frustrations with such a rustic environment that she found fame. Her poem, "Renascence," published in 1912, is an ode to Maine and at the same time a cry for freedom. At the first stanza she recognizes the beauty of the "three mountains and a woodand three long islands in a bay," but feels that they bind her from greater things. The opposite was actually true. Although her poem did not win the literary prize for which it was submitted, it created such a sensation that a benefactor actually came forth and offered her a free education at the then women's college at Vassar. Millay had found her ticket out of the boondocks precisely by writing about them.

Maine would continue to influence Edna in her career as many of her works took inspiration from its natural beauty. This northern state darling would go on to write much-quoted poetry, translate the works of Baudelaire and become the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Millay was also quite a scandal for her time. It is known that she had affairs with woman during her time at Vassar and lived in an open marriage with her husband Eugene.

She is often not as much of a prominent figure in American literature today as she was when her writing brought her celebrity in the 1920's through 40's. Needless to say, one reading of her works assures her place in our literary canon. Her life, though at times reckless, was rich and diverse and certainly produced great works of literature up until her death in 1950. Maine can be proud to claim such a brilliant talent as Edna St. Vincent Millay.

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