The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay

A career-spanning selection edited by Nancy Milford, covering Millay’s work from Renascence and Other Poems through A Few Figs from Thistles, Second April, and The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver, plus eight of her finest sonnets.

Why Start Here

Millay published over a dozen collections across three decades, and the quality is uneven. Her early work made her famous, her middle period deepened her craft, and her later political poetry divided critics. This Modern Library selection cuts through it all and gives you the essential poems without the detours.

You get “Renascence,” the long poem that launched her career when she was barely out of her teens, a work of visionary intensity that still reads like nothing else. You get the wicked, witty lyrics from A Few Figs from Thistles that made her the voice of Greenwich Village rebellion. And you get the sonnets, where Millay did some of her most lasting work, bending a form associated with male longing into something sharper and more honest.

At 192 pages, the collection is short enough to read in a weekend but substantial enough to show you why Millay mattered then and still matters now.

What to Expect

Formally accomplished verse that uses traditional meters and rhyme schemes to say things that felt radical in the 1920s and still carry a charge. Millay writes about desire, independence, grief, and beauty with a directness that can feel almost confrontational. Her famous line “My candle burns at both ends” comes from this period, and it captures her sensibility perfectly: life is short, burn bright, and do not apologize. Read the lyrics first, then the sonnets, and let the range of her voice surprise you.