Celebrate the 129
th birthday of Pulitzer Prize poet Edna St. Vincent Millay with Maine poets reading letters and poems that focus on Millay’s exploration of loss and renewal. Poets will also read their own poems in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, personal loss, and the threat of global climate change.
A hundred years ago, Millay began writing “Renascence” in 1911 when she was nineteen and caring for her ailing father in Kingman, Maine. “Renascence,” which moves between life and death and ends with a sense of hope and revival, was the first poem to catapult Millay to stardom, winning fourth place in The Lyric Year anthology in 1912. This year’s annual birthday reading will focus on Millay’s poems that mediate a balance between grief and renewal of hope, such as those from her third collection, Second Spring, that includes an elegy for Millay’s Vassar classmate who died from the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918.
Maine poets to read in celebration of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 129th birthday
The Farnsworth Art Museum will host a special event on Zoom that will open to the public titled: ‘Edna St. Vincent Millay: Balancing Grief & Renewal.’
Courier Gazette
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ROCKLAND On Sunday, Feb. 21, the Farnsworth Art Museum hosts a 129th birthday celebration for Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. The special event, titled “Edna St. Vincent Millay: Balancing Grief & Renewal,” will take place on Zoom beginning at 1:30 p.m., and will feature Maine poets reading letters and poems that focus on Millay’s explorations of loss and renewal. The event is free and open to the public.