Vox Populi
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Edna St. Vincent Millay: Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find
Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find
The roots of last year’s roses in my breast;
I am as surely riper in my mind
As if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed.
Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,
Call me in all things what I was before,
A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;
I tell you I am what I was and more.
My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air.
My sky is black with small birds bearing south;
Say what you will, confuse me with fine care,
Put by my word as but an April truth,—
Autumn is no less on me that a rose
Hugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes.
~~~~
Public Domain
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892- 1950) was a poet and playwright. Her poetry collections include The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver (Flying Cloud Press, 1922), winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and Renascence and Other Poems (Harper, 1917).
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The ever-amazing Edna! Love.
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Millay is an amazing poet.
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I never thought until I just read this, its no mere coincidence April is National Poetry Month. And oh those Autumns that come, and like us, go!
Who is or was her equal?
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Millay was certainly the best American sonneteer we’ve ever had.
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No one, is my reply, Sean. No one!
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How I love, Michael, those poems by Millay you regularly bless us with. What a fabulous gift she had, and how her rhymes (so often seamlessly enjambed) feel effortless, fluid, and right! I never tire of reading her poems/sonnets. Thanks for a lovely start of my day…
And, oh, this:
“A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;
I tell you I am what I was and more.”
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One of my favorite poets. What skill! What passion!
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Yay! I AM an Edna fan! Was from the first time I read her poems.
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Me too, Rose Mary, my sister of a different mother!
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