#Fig thistle plus
#Fig thistle free

(Sweet to meet upon the street, why did you glance me by?)īut he caught the quaint Italian quip she flung him from the gutter He walked like a king through the filth and the clutter, (I shall never get to sleep, the way I feel!) She had haggled from the fruit-man of his rotting ware (Pink nets and wet shells trodden under heel) The fruit-carts and clam-carts were ribald as a fair, (Lord, God in Heaven, will it never be dawn?) (Lay me out in organdie, lay me out in lawn!)Īnd everywhere I stepped there was a baby or a cat The women squatting on the stoops were slovenly and fat, ('Little dirty Latin child, let the lady by!') I saw him lay his hand upon her torn black hair (Sweet to meet upon the street, why must I be so shy?) We hailed, 'Good morrow, mother!' to a shawl-covered head,Īnd bought a morning paper, which neither of us read Īnd she wept, 'God bless you!' for the apples and pears,Īnd we gave her all our money but our subway fares.ĪS I went walking up and down to take the evening air, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry įrom a dozen of each we had bought somewhere Īnd the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,Īnd the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold. We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon Īnd the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable–īut we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. SAFE upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:Ĭome and see my shining palace built upon the sand! While Millay brilliantly mastered the form, it felt stifled and forsaking the spontaneity of thought that is so magnificently accomplished in her other poems in this early collection. Only the four sonnets as a group didn't work for me. It's one of my favorites in the collection. She even challenged the centuries old mythological story of Daphne, turning it completely around with wit, whimsy, and a clever twist. I am surprised she is not more revered today among feminists for her daring poetry of a liberated woman, breaking the barriers of gender conventions as she did in this splendid collection.

#Fig thistle plus

But, while faithful to the conventional poetic forms (which was a plus for me), in all other ways her poetry was modernist and, for a female poet, much ahead of her time.

#Fig thistle free

I adore the music of her rhymes and rhythmic meters even though this fell out of fashion in the modernist poetry in favor of free verse forms. Almost all poems reflect a free-spirited young woman unwilling to play by society's gender rules. She wrote them while living in the bohemian West Village. Millay's second collection of poetry, originally published in 1920 with 15 poems and then expanded with 8 more by the 1922 edition.

Yet it was The Unexplorer that captures my attention most on this read through, partially because I don’t remember ever reading it before, but mainly because it displayed Vincent’s humor and made me laugh: The rest of you may be dutiful ants, she seems to say, but look at what a glorious grasshopper I am! The Singing Woman from the Wood’s Edge elaborates on being a unique and wonderful oddity, and Portrait By A Neighbor gives the perspective of the stolid citizen looking at the activity of this strange woman who just refused to mind. With her pithy opening poems First Fig and Second Fig Millay landed a powerful one two combo on the staid, Protestant ethic of her country. These books, published in 19 before she was 30 contain some of her best known work, and the themes and voice that would mark her career were already clearly evident. Having just read this volume back to back with Second April I’m struck by how established Millay’s voice already was as a young poet. Thank you so much, dear Vesna, for sending me this delightful breeze of refreshing lyricism on a wonderfully sunny spring Sunday. (Does this poem remind you of a certain pop song too?) Flippant and scoffing, witty and at times a little naughty in a childlike way, the free-spirited woman is entitled to be as inconstant in love like men: The poems testify of a passionate lust for life of a young woman who wasn’t to hang her head acquiescing to the coercion of the gender roles of her time, as the cheerful rebelliousness in Daphne and The philosopher illustrates: Gracefully musical in her rhythms and rhyming, the melodious writing energizes. As with the first collection I read by her, Second April, I was mesmerized by her blending of the beauty of classic lyrical forms (sonnet, tercet, eulogy) with emotional self-expression in various moods and registers, swerving from feisty, vital and playful educing her freedom of mind to the more considerate, confessional stanza’s revealing heartbreak. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) was the second collection of hers that was published (in 1920). A Few Figs from Thistles, the second collection I read by Edna St.