Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford is an authorized biography of the poet. I must admit to not having read a lot of her poetry. What I have read I find to be excellent, though typically touching on things that don’t interest me. Still, that’s like reading 5 percent of someone’s works and saying they don’t interest you. Maybe less than 5 percent. It’s not a fair assessment.

Millay was an enigma. Raised in a sheltered lifestyle in small-town Maine, she eventually adopted a Bohemian lifestyle in Greenwich Village. She had a number of lovers, including openly after she married.

Somehow, her poetry spoke to young women, maybe to older women as well. It was mostly formal poetry, rhyming and in meter. Here subjects included women’s liberation and sexual freedom. I was surprised to find three different books of her collected poems in my library. One was my sister’s, left at our dad’s house and moved to mine with all the books. One I remember picking up second hand. The third I don’t remember acquiring at all. I don’t imagine I’ll keep all three, but I will for sure read in some.

Back to Savage Beauty. The title comes from a line in one of her poems.

I was waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk

Between me and the crying of the frogs?

Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,

That am a timid woman, on her way

From one house to another!

That’s not supposed to be double-spaced, but I can’t figure out how to get it single-spaced and put the line breaks in. Ah me, I must learn more about Word Press and html.

The most disappointing thing to me about Savage Beauty was that, while the series of events that changed Millay from naïve schoolgirl to promiscuous woman were given, no why was suggested. Nor was any negative reaction from family mentioned. She graduated Vassar College at age 25, having started later than most young people, and moved straight to the Greenwich Village area of New York City. She supported herself by her poetry. She also wrote, produced, and acted in some off-Broadway plays. She found that men were instantly attracted to her and she could have any of them she wanted. Before long, she was having them. She fended off several marriage proposals. She made an extended trip to Europe, all the while maintaining the loose lifestyle.

She eventually married a man with some money. They bought an estate in the New York Berkshires and sort of lived there. I say “sort of” because they seemed to be gone much. With each book Edna went on a long promotion and reading tour. It’s said her voice was mesmerizing, and audiences filled every hall she read in. Besides the tours were frequent stays in New York City, trips abroad, and occasional summers at an island off the coast of Maine.

Millay drank and smoked to excess, and began having health problems from it. An auto accident, where she was thrown out of the car, caused her much pain and led to her addiction to morphine and other drugs. In 1950, at age 58, she met her death at her home. The description Milford gives in the book makes it possible it was either a tragic accident or suicide. Millay was alone when she apparently fell down a long flight of stairs and wasn’t found for twelve hours or more.

All the tragedy of her life, all her lifestyle, was unknown to me before reading this. I knew only that she was a renowned poet of the 20th Century. It’s good to know about her life, though I don’t know that I feel particularly enlightened. I think saddened is the reaction I take away from the biography.

So the question now is: Does Savage Beauty stay on my bookshelves? I can at a minimum move it from my reading style to a permanent shelf. But will I ever read it again? I think it unlikely I’ll re-read it, so it should go for donation to a thrift store. But, if I paid full price for it, I hate to do that. What to do, what to do? I think, in the spirit of de-cluttering, out it goes.