Book 255: Savage Beauty
I am not, as I believe has been expressed elsewhere, a big fan of poetry. So when Dr. Regina recommended a book about one of the foremost American poets of the 20th century, I had my doubts. Granted, Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote “First Fig,” one of the few poems I actually like, but I was expecting a book dense with poetry.
Which, in fact, this was, and I have to admit that I glossed over some of the poetry, because I just don’t like poetry. Millay was extremely talented, and there are a few pieces she produced that I really like, but I could honestly take or leave the rest. (I can see some of you shuddering as you read this; sorry, but I’m a bit of a philistine when it comes to poetry.)
Millay was also a rather interesting although also deeply troubled person, and I kind of wish that Milford hadn’t played so heavily on the stereotypical ideas about poets; that they are all crazed, for example, or extremely flawed people. I think Milford really did her research, and it shows in the generally balanced (if often somewhat dry) tone of the book, but sometimes I think she got a little heavy-handed.
One thing about this book that I really liked was the random interjections from Norma Millay. It made me feel more like I was listening to someone talk about St. Vincent Millay at the dinner table, with Norma interjecting now and then to clarify things. I thought it was a rather neat trick, myself.
Millay’s life also intersected with a number of other prominent people in 20th century arts and letters, and it was neat to spot references here and there to people, places, and events in the wider world. Sometimes biography has a tendency to get very insular, as though the biographee lived in a vacuum, totally untouched by the outside world, so I liked seeing the connections between Millay and the rest of the world.
Demographics:
Savage Beauty, by Nancy Milford. Published 2001, 550 pages. Biography.
September 3rd, 2008
I LOVED this book. It’s interesting for me because of what she was trying to accomplish - to throw off the traditional role of wife/mother that adult women were expected to fulfill back in the day, and how hard it was for her to do that. And how women like Vincent Millay, however flawed, created some of the roadmaps for women like me to follow now. And how sanitized the information we’re given about artists and writers is in public school - at least in my experience, they’re held up as these incredible, accomplished role models, when they were often tormented by the way the world worked, slept around like crazy, and drank like fish.
I find myself spending time thinking about how much of what caused her to act out was frustration with her social sphere; how different might her life have been if the culture has been different - whether it would be access to better medical care for her mental health, more women involved in the publishling industry to support her career, different attitudes about alcohol, about lesbian relationships, etc., etc., etc.
All that being said, I love her poetry too; it seems like it would have been a really dry read without that emotional connection…….
Milford also wrote a biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, whose combined schizophrenia and marriage to F. Scott make Millay’s life look like stability itself. F. Scott actually lifted whole passages from Zelda’s personal diaries and journals in several of his books . He also tried to prevent her from publishing her own novel because, in his opinion, their life together was his intellectual property.