Rating: 
Summary: don't want it (or her) to end
Review: Pick it up...fall in love with this unique character, be you man, woman, straight, gay, black, white, poet or math-whiz. You will be enthralled, drawn in, swept up, cast about, etc., etc. Need I go on? Do read it. Quite a story, told pretty well, but read it for the person it tells of and the life she lived. Oh, what a life she lived!
Rating: 
Summary: Borderline Personality Disorder has become an increasingly
Review: popular subject for Novelists, Biographers and Memoirs.This book fits into the genre of wild, beautiful, unstable women and the lives they lead. They haunt, mistify, tantilize and consume the reader with their beauty and unpredictability. Ultimately they all have a lethal self-destructive side and so it is with Millay. Other books that explore these qualities to a greater or lesser degree include:
Zelda: A Biography
Girl, Interrupted
The Courtship Dance of the Borderline The sad truth is that ultimately the sufferer of the condition can not tolerate their own madness which consumes them like a cancer. Their lives do however make for fascinating reading, lives which we ourselves might dare wish for if only we could control the rage, but whose lives are such because of it.
Rating: 
Summary: Cluttered Biography
Review: Savage Beauty was good, but filed with information that was too detailic and too sexual for my liking. Every one of Millay's love afairs- with men and women- are deeply discussed in Savage Beauty. The information about Vincent's poetic side was beautifully written. That is why I read it-- to learn about her poetry and her lifelong drama. I didn't read this to discover her sexual fantasies nor her sexual persuits. The chapters consisting of Vincent's and her girlfriends' relationships are disgusting and unneccessary. The book is good, just skip over the sexual chapters in order to avoid nausea. A different biography on Vincent might be better.
Rating:
Summary: a tragic beauty
Review: Savage Beauty was tragic. Millay was very gifted by anyone's standards. Her alternating periods of mania and depression are but one indicator. Her sensuality was another indicator. Her strong defense of those she perceived as warranting her support is another. Her independence and defiance of authority is yet one more. The tragedy is that today, with all of the available medications and therapies, that she might have lived a happier and longer life. But, would we have medicated away her passion? More strongly about the book, it ties in the passion of the poetry with the mood and events of her day to day life. It made poetry meaningful.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating Subject -- Frustrating Bio
Review: The author of this book seems almost completely incurious as to the motivation and sources of Millay's actions. She provides a complete chronology but almost never asks why. Why marry this man? Have that affair at this time? Why no children? Why the apparent indifference (other than in her poetry) to spiritual questions? Etc.
Millay's charm is evident in her letters and her talent is illustrated by the poetry that is quoted. But Milford never seems interested in asking why this woman behaved so unconventionally for her time and her class. Even when Millay mentions her "philsophy" Milford doesn't bother to discuss what that philosophy was and how it was revealed in her poetry and/or other writing.
As other reviewers have noted -- the book documents a lot of her sexual behavior -- but never tries to provide shed any light on the sources of that behavior. So the book ends up being sort of prurient without ever being graphic.
A big disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: A good assemblage of research material
Review: The author presents a highly detailed account and reproduction of what seems to be every letter sent to or from Miss Millay. Unfortunately, there is very little analysis, comment, or even prioritization. For example, the few sentences devoted to an abortion Miss Millay undergoes are barely an offhand reference and seem far less important than a description of the weather that particular day. No comment is given on what this meant for a woman to undergo such a procedure in the early 20th century or what effect it had on Miss Millay's life, attitude, or her poetry. The reader gets very little idea of any opinions the author may have about her subject and this is disappointing. Also disappointing is how little of Miss Millay's poetry is provided or analysed. We are told how new, unusual and even ground-breaking it was with no examples or comparison to other works more typical of that time period. All in all the author provides us with a highly detailed description of Miss Millay's life as largely told through a confusing reproduction of correspondence and recent recollections by a family member. Unfortunately the lack of examples, analysis or prioritization makes the book come off largely as a preliminary assemblage of research material instead of a well-thought-out presentation of what was a truly remarkable life.
Rating:
Summary: Promiscuity and tenderness
Review: The first poem of Millay's I read was "The Spring and the Fall", shown to me by a jr. high school friend. Edna St. Vincent Millay has always somehow been with me since then, especially since I began teaching her poems in my English classes more than a decade ago. What really motivated me to buy this book were student questions about Millay's life that I couldn't answer based on the meager materials I had at hand; for example, 'Why did Millay's mother ask Millay's father to leave the family?' and 'How could Millay write such tender poetry when she was so promiscuous?' I'm glad to say that this book provided answers to these and many other questions I'd never have thought to ask. Milford's work helps the reader begin to know the very complex personality behind the poetic genius and tenderness - as well as the nymphomania and utter self-centeredness. Millay had electrifying charm, and it probably is very difficult not to use this to personal advantage when one has it. Milford also delves into some of the origins underlying Millay's life choices by describing her family life and relationships in considerable detail. Since a very young age, Millay had to be the strong one who held things together in her family, and she was perhaps never able to find someone strong enough to look after *her* in the same way - she held the upper hand in almost every relationship she had, and this paved the way for abuse of her formidable personal power. Millay was so indulged by the world and herself that she must have felt either invincible or simply fatalistic as she slid ever more deeply into what could only be called debauchery, and later serious chemical dependence. The side biographies interwoven into the book are fascinating as well - how Millay's husband Eugen consciously chose to indulge and put up with Millay as a path to his own self-realization, which he built on the excitement of being near the vortex of Millay's poetic and emotional tempests. There are George Slocombe and George Dillon, two men who succeeded in truly captivating Millay for extended periods of time. And then there's the ongoing comic relief provided by descriptions of the author's interactions with Millay's one surviving (at the time of the writing) sister Norma, who in spite of a disinclination to write otherwise once penned a quite brilliant sonnet in a desperate - and successful - attempt to get Edna's attention when Edna was largely ignoring her. Norma later expressed anger at 'what it took' just to get Edna to answer her letters. And then there's the different levels of competition among the four Millay women, Edna, her mother Cora, who also aspired to being a poet, Norma, who reluctantly provided the author with access to Edna's papers, and the youngest sister Kathleen, who wrote very good poetry that came at the wrong moment from the wrong family. This book is exhilarating. It's just the kind the more mundane among us read to find out about lives we will never and would never ourselves live.
Rating:
Summary: Savage Boredom.
Review: This 540 page biography of one of America's greatest poets could pass for barbiturates, morphine or any of the other cocktail of drugs poor Vincent had to take towards the end of her life to put her to sleep. If you are a a Millay admirer (as I am) you may have to rely on heavy doses of amphetamines to slug your way through it. Be forewarned. Millford relies on 'never before published material' given to her by Norma, the poet's sister--presumably at the price of interjecting Norma into the story, who apparently suffers from avant-garde delusions that she's just about as frisky as her famous sibling. A small sin compared to the fact that a shoebox of letters doth not an autobiography make. But hell, if you're going to be praised as THE definitive writer of Edna Millay's life, throw in the shoebox and the kitchen sink! I'm surprised Millford didn't go for 1,540 pages. Astonishingly Millay comes off as BORING throughout most of Millford's book. So let's see: She has bisexual affairs at Vassar--which sounds like a good place to have them-- She's a (gasp!) feminist! and (ready for another cliche?) bohemian!! She travels to Paris (where else?) where nothing much happens. She marries for security and some love and mutually decide they'll have an "open marriage" (yawn). They travel to the Far East, where nothing much happens, either. However, after having dazzled crowds of admirers during poetry tours with her flaming red hair, masmerizing voice, and all around panache, she discovers that middle age and menopouse rob her of adulation so she finds comfort in drugs. Her husband joins her (might as well, nothing else appears to be happening). Soon enough, they're both dead. He of lung cancer, she, a year later, of a fall down a flight of stairs; possibly suicide, but it might have been an accident, we'll never know. The End. Did I say boring? Millay comes off as silly. If you're willing to pay the price there ARE gems among the rubble of this book, but they don't stand out. Millford flattens out the more dramatic or psychologically interesting passages. This is not being 'objective', just dull. Edna St.Vincent Millay was one of the more complex and passionate human beings who ever set pen to paper. Pity she couldn't find a more inspired biographer.
Rating:
Summary: Poets Should Die Young
Review: This biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay lays bare a life of total solipsistic narcissism. So how can her poetry speak to us in universal terms? It can't. It doesn't. Compare her to a few contemporaries such as Pound, Elliot, Williams, Cummings, Frost. Her work doesn't measure up. Even that most favorite and often quoted quatrain that begins "my candle burns at both ends ... " now sounds like smug advertising copy. Millay's reputation was based on clever publicity. She was one of the first mass-media icons: a poetry spouting, cigarette smoking, bath-tub gin drinking, flaming redheaded genius Jazz Baby and a poetry publisher's delight: her stuff sold and in unheard of (for poetry) quantities. This manufactured Greenwich Village literary vamp was much admired by the newly liberated, and newly middle-class, women of her generation who saw in her a new female paradigm and eagerly bought both her volumes of poetry and her publicly proclaimed "bohemian" philosophy. Even the Pulitzer Committee bought the act. They awarded her the prize for poetry in 1923. I came to this book with fond memories of Ms. Milford's excellent biography of Zelda Fitzgerald and assumed from what little I knew of Millay's life and work that this would be another triumph for the author. But a biographer is only as interesting as his/her subject. Millay's life after her 1923 marriage is a dull recital of the life and times of a pampered, alcoholic and occasionally indiscreet Columbia County matron. Unlike Zelda, she wasn't given to throwing herself headlong into fountains, trying vainly to sabotage her husband's career, or dancing madly away in the parlor in a deranged attempt to become a ballarina at the advanced age of thirty. Not at all. Everything about Millay was premeditated, from the opportunistic friendship with the older woman who arranged for her to attend Vassar to her studied public persona, chance played little or no part. Even her marriage, unlike the profligate Zelda's, was not one of youthful impulse or grand passion. It was a business deal with a man of substantial means, a marriage of the utmost convenience, for her, to a "fan" who asked for almost nothing in return, not even fidelity. As this biography documents, she was never so addicted to the personal freedom her poetry exalted as she was to personal comfort and to personal servants and to expensive clothes and to large quantities of morphine. And, she got them all. And you thought poets had to suffer.
Rating:
Summary: access to letters provides accurate picture
Review: This book, one of two biographies of Edna St. Vincent Millay out this year, provides us with a full-fleshed view of the lyric poet. Nancy Milford had unparalleled access to the correspondence of Millay, and interviews with her surviving sister, Norma. Milford wrote the book over a period of years, allowing her study of Millay some time for seasoning and reflection. The early slangy, insouciant letters between the poet and her mother and sisters, are a delight, revealing their loving, teasing relationships. (I admit to being surprised by their wide use of baby talk.) Since Millay moved in literary circles and knew many writers, the letters back and forth to lovers and friends are wonderfully expressive. Many female readers may wish that their husbands and boyfriends could write of love and longing as eloquently!
Milford reveals how Millay labored over her art, how creating her lyrics which seem to flow smoothly and effortlessly, required energy and commitment on her part to produce.
She details Millay's slide into alcoholism and drug dependence in her later years. One wonders how intelligent, educated people like Millay and her husband Eugene could fall into such a state, but apparently there was no one in their lives to do what today is trendily called "an intervention," and as they became more and more isolated, Millay's physical decline was accelerated.
Kudoes to Nancy Milford for a comprehensive biography of a passionate American poet!
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