I deleted my original review of Eddie’s work, because, although far from pedantic, I later found it to be quite condescending. Yes, Edna loved her mother, and the believer is called on to be a “friend to sinners”, but it’s not entirely friendly to scan something or someone (like a theologian with Mozart, say) only for what’s agreeable to you, and to dismiss the rest as a pretended ‘kindness’. Eddie’s work was mostly in form or whatever, it’s true; it’s old-fashioned in this century—only very late works don’t have rhyme or beat or whatever—but!, she also turns very quickly to aristocratic sensual rebellion, to dining out and listening to love songs, and it’s only very early works that have a conventional schoolgirl religiosity about dying and rising like Jesus. (Wayne was even worse than me; although he does have anti-codependent sections of his work which it’s easy for someone like me to miss or assume he isn’t really trying to get out there, in his very peaceable synthesis-making kind of way he can be very codependent, and would have had you believe that Eddie is about Buddha/Jesus/Mohammed/Divine Source just like him, glossing over most of it.) You don’t have to agree with everything you read, or dislike everything you don’t agree with, but to read Eddie the high-class party girl poet, you kinda have to give some respect and kindness to her ‘savage beauty’ instead of being condescending and pretending that she doesn’t exist, or is more polite than she really is. That’s really seeing someone, and then, once you see people, you can know that we’re all living on the world, without being glib about it. I was kinda new to DiscountDepartment (which I’m now leaving) when I wrote this, and kinda glimmering and smiling, and unable I guess to notice deceit, or understand the anger it creates, so with someone like Eddie I was a little clueless, you know. Both her and Anne Sexton I’ll have to re-read eventually (after Shakespeare/Wordsworth/Dickinson), and although I think I like Annie better for her sheer tired honesty, her frazzled feelings that are more gentle somehow, Eddie isn’t so much the product of a different time that she needs to be forgotten, you know.

Seems a little slight compared to some of the other verse I've been reading lately (excepting the Lovecraft of course), especially when I compare to Hart Crane. Kudos for actual meter and rhyme and lots of poems about dead people. I wonder what her "Unselected Poetry" is like? ( )

I have always been fond of Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnets. It all started with Love Is Not All one evening whilst looking for something to read before going to bed. I knew then I had to seek more of her works. This sonnet is not included in this collection however but the ones that are have strengthened that fondness by a mile. To discover she was openly bisexual also sheds a new light upon her works; subtly some of them hints on same-sex relationships. Regrettably, I find rhyming poetry a little tiring these days that amidst her playfulness, creativity, sarcasm, humour, and wit — whilst fastening a lot of themes within the breaks and spaces between her vivid words enough to draw a memory or evoke a sense of a thousand emotions be it the departure of autumn, death at your fingertips ("Mine is a body that should die at sea! And have for a grave, instead of a grave Six feet deep and the length of me, All the water that is under the wave!") or the painful warfare of longing ("Searching my heart for its true sorrow, This is the thing I find to be: That I am weary of words and people, Sick of the city, wanting the sea;" and "My heart is warm with the friends I make, And better friends I'll not be knowing, Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, No matter where it's going.") and a heartbreak ("My heart is what it was before, A house where people come and go; But it is winter with your love, The Sashes are beset with snow." and "And what are you that, wanting you, I should be kept awake As many nights as there are days With weeping for your sake?") — has turned off my enjoyment overall. Despite this personal gripe of mine there's no question hers are one of the best rhyming poetry I've read so far in comparison to W.H. Auden's whose poetry collection I haven't finished yet due to them being twice as taxing although Funeral Blues and O Tell Me The Truth About Love (funny little thing how this one involves nose-picking) have always been my personal favourites.

For all of us ageing:
"Was it for this I uttered prayers,
And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,
That now, domestic as a plate,
I should retire at half-past eight?"
— GROWN-UP

As a side note, I dearly liked these: Indifference, Time does not bring relief; you all have lied, If I should learn, in some quite casual way, The Dream, I shall forget you presently, my dear, MacDougal Street, Passer Mortuus Est, Travel, Exiled, Grown-up, Recuerdo, Thursday, Ebb, We all talk of taxes, and I call you friend, Alms, and I know I am but summer to your heart. ( )

I love her poetry. It is beautiful and truthful. I find her personal history just as interesting as her work, and loved the intro with background information about her at this point in her life and her overall views and outlook. I would recommend this for someone who is new to her writing. ( )

Her poetry is so true and sounds so unaffected..."After all's said and done, the things that are / Of moment. / Few indeed! When I can make / Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! / 'I had you and I have you now no more.'" and "Time does not bring relief; you all lied..." She is still transcendentally pithy. ( )