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I just love this poem. It is absolutely mordacious and her use of language is like being doused with cold water or being slapped in the face. It makes me smile.
I think, though, that if this were written by a man about women I would feel insulted.
Reactions from you all?

Okay, so I'm reading a bio of Millay right now and feel I must correct what I wrote above.
(This should teach me not to trust what I read on the Net!)
1. She didn't choose to be called Vincent per se, it was her middle name -St. Vincent- she was given the name in honor of an uncle who recovered there from a stretch of nine days without food or water. Her family always called her Vincent.
2. Her first well known published poem (Renaiscense) was actually very well received by the public and critics alike. It did not, however, win the prize and that, paired with it's depth and innovation was what helped bring her publicity and start her on her way.
3. My assumption had been (and, really, still is) that "I, being born a woman and distressed" was about men/a man-but reading more about her definitely opens the possibility that it could also have been about women.


I'm about 1/4 into the book and she's only24. Very interesting.

I know what you mean. I am very much that way myself. I think the only bio I've read where the subject didn't suffer was Louis Armstrong.
I think it was for several reasons, one; he is dead, two; he had a very difficult childhood, three; he suffered enormous prejudice.
He also seemed to have a charming personality.
But the man was about as faithless as they come! (An early mentor warned him to never fully trust a woman and to always have at least one on the side.)

Ian, you're quite right, but it was thought that his mother prostituted herself to support her two children for a while after their father took off and married (bigamously) another woman. His first girlfriend was a prostitute also and she was married to her pimp. She started up with Louis and of course, they got caught. And so it went...


I'm still reading Savage Beauty. It is on the long side and every copy I have received has something wrong with one of the cassettes (grr) so I keep getting a diff copy... last night I just gave up and went on the the next one and now Ms. Millay is in the middle of a three way relationship between herself, her hubby and apparently a gay or bisexual man. Drat on missing the set up.

Anyway, just came here to post her feelings on e. e. cummings. She was pretty scathing about him. Said he was pompous, wrote a lot of drivel.
"...inexplicable, from any point of view, to a person as intelligent as myself, then he does so with a motive that is frivolous from the point of view of art..."
"Here is a big talent in the hands of an arrogant, peevish, self satisfied, self indulgent writer That is to say, here is a big talent in pretty bad hands."
She proposes that he be given "enough rope. He may hang himself or he may lasso a unicorn."


Yikes!