Naturally Vincent: Millay as Eco-Poet
February 23, 2020 @ 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay, from “Spring”
Celebrate the 128th birthday of Pulitzer Prize poet Edna St. Vincent Millay with Maine poets reading letters and poems that focus on Millay’s evolution from an inveterate Romantic poet to a full-fledged eco-poet. Poets will also read their own poems about nature as well as the poetry of Abbie Huston Evans.
Millay published her first poem, “Forest Trees,” at the age of fourteen. From her girlhood excursions on Penobscot Bay, hikes in the surrounding hills, nature walks with her Sunday School teacher and fellow poet, Abbie Huston Evans, and later primitive stays on her beloved Ragged Island in Casco Bay, Millay eventually came to view nature as a constant, a dispassionate entity apart from the romanticism, escapism, and philosophy that humans invest in it.
Cost: Free