Edna St. Vincent Millay: Balancing Grief & Renewal

On Sunday, February 21, we celebrated the 129th birthday of Pulitzer Prize poet Edna St. Vincent Millay with Maine poets reading letters and poems that focus on Millay’s exploration of loss and renewal. Poets also read their own poems in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, personal loss, and the threat of global climate change. Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine on February 22, 1892.

Click on the video below to view a recording of the program!

Below is a list of the poems that were read:

Kathleen Ellis 
Two of the poems in Millay’s 5-poem “Memorial to D.C.,” her college friend who died from the Spanish flu in 1918.
“How You Dressed for the Pandemic” about my great-grandmother who died from the Spanish flu in 1919.

Stuart Kestenbaum 
Sonnet XLIII by Millay
“Theology” by Stuart Kestenbaum.
Link to the film of Nancy Hodermarsky speaking the same poem that I read: https://vimeo.com/454487585

François Amar 
Le Portrait by Charles Baudelaire along with Edna St. Vincent Millay’s English translation
The Portrait.At the Window by Francois Amar

Carol Bachofner 
(titles unavailable at this time)

Ellen Goldsmith 
“Dirge Without Music” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Climbing Stairs” by Ellen Goldsmith.

Annaliese Jakimides
“This Dusky Faith” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Isolation Assignment” by Annaliese Jakimides.

Bria Lamonica
“Ashes of Life” by Edna St Vincent Millay 
“We Broke Her” by Bria Lamonica

Gary Lawless
“Justice denied in Massachusetts” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“The Scream of the Stones” by Marcela Delpastre translated from the Occitan by Pierre Joris and Nicole Peyrafitte


Kristen Lindquist 
“Spring” by Edna St. Vincent Millay 
14 haiku called “Pandemic Spring” by Kristen Lindquist (The individual haiku don’t have titles.)


Claire Milliken
“Euclid Alone has Looked on Beauty Bare” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Airport Sky” by Claire Millikin

Wendy Rapaport
Sonnet “Love is not all” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“I don’t have good posture” by Wendy Rapaport

Elizabeth Tibbetts
“Truce for a Moment” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Lookout” by Elizabeth Tibbets

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