The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems

By halfway though this book, it was plain to me that Millay wrote it in the midst of a struggle with despair, most likely over the infamous execution of the anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti. This execution occurred in 1927 (one year prior to The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems) depite recanted witness testimonies and conflicting ballistics evidence. Millay had campaigned in the extensive movement to prove their innocence, and the loss must have affected her deeply. Although only a couple poems in this book deal with the execution directly, these two were particularly powerful and heartfelt, and the same disillusion in them can be felt in most of the other poems too.

Her struggle lends the book a bleakness (particularly in the first quarter show more of the book) in a "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" kind of way, but it also speaks to me strongly. The sonnet "To Jesus on His Birthday" for instance is almost devastatingly powerful!

For this you bled upon the bitter tree:
A yard of tinsel ribbon bought and sold;
A paper wreath; a day at home for me.
...
The stone the angel rolled away with tears
Is back upon your mouth these thousand years.

I feel deeply for this ardent, intelligent woman as she looks out upon a difficult, broken world. In the portion of the public that supported the executions, she clearly saw a general lack of compassion and even integrity of thought that disillusioned her. And given some callous rhetoric of her day, I can certainly understand her disappointment, especially in the un-Christian mindset of the religious people who were supposed to be motivated by the Sermon on the Mount. Particularly now, her disappointment in their lack of compassion speaks to me.

And yet despite this, the second half of the book is intermittently shot through with hope. For instance, I love the exhorting end to her sonnet "The Pioneer," responding to a statue dedicated to Mott, Anthony, and Stanton:

Even now the silk is tugging at the staff:
Take up the song; forget the epitaph.

In terms of craft, this book (along with Fatal Interview: Sonnets) is one of two strongest of her books that I've read so far, and I've read several. The language is sparer, more modern, and the word choice has more resonance.

The title poem is pleasing in its directness:

White sky, over the hemlocks bowed with snow,
Saw you not at the beginning of evening the antlered
buck and his doe
Standing in the apple orchard? I saw them. I saw
them suddenly go,
Tails up, with leaps lovely and slow,
Over the stone-wall into the wood of hemlocks
bowed with snow

There were one or two excellent poems in Renascence & Other Poems, but here to my ear, there are a great many. Quite a few of the lyrics and sonnets alike strike me as very fine. Also, this book for the most part abandons the histrionic posing of Romanticism with a capital R that's very strong in some of the lyrics in earlier books, particularly Second April.

Overall, this is an excellent book that doesn't require a great deal of head scratching to understand. A closer reading can yield more, of course, but the entire book can be comfortably read over a handful of hours. show less