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Edna St. Vincent MillayA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Millay works both in traditional and experimental forms. Traditional forms incorporate meter and rhyme, and Millay is most known for English sonnet structure. She utilizes traditional forms to convey political and philosophical topics connected with gender and sexuality. Millay is most known as a skilled sonneteer. Formal poetry utilizes meter (a controlled arrangement of stressed or unstressed syllables) and incorporates end-rhyme scheme, either consecutive or patterned.
Many also consider Millay a part of the Modernist literary movement. Modernist literature often reveals experience in unconventional ways such as stream of consciousness and deviation from linear narrative (MasterClass. “Modernist Literature Guide: Understanding Literary Modernism—2022.” MasterClass, MasterClass, 14 Apr. 2021). Many credit the poet Gertrude Stein with encapsulating this approach with the phrase “a rose is a rose is a rose.” When one repeats the word “rose” enough times, the mental picture of a rose begins to morph.
Although Millay is most known for traditional form, she experiments by returning to and diverting from it, especially with the traditional English sonnet style in both line count and meter.
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
An Ancient Gesture
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Conscientious Objector
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Ebb
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I Will Put Chaos Into Fourteen Lines
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Lament
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Song of a Second April
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Spring
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Courage That My Mother Had
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Spring And The Fall
Edna St. Vincent Millay