Colin Falck (Essay Date January/February 1992)

SOURCE: Falck, Colin. "The Occulting of Edna Millay." P. N. Review 18, no. 3 (January/February 1992): 21-3.

In the following essay, Falck defends Millay's poetic reputation, identifying her as a skilled lyric-ironist whose work addresses the conflict between societal roles and a woman's spiritual independence. Falck also contends that Millay has fared poorly with critics because her verse is straightforward and well-executed, prompting little need for interpretation.

As the centenary—1992—of her birth approaches, thoughtful admirers of Edna St Vincent Millay's poetry are going to have to ask themselves how it can be that the poet who was once the most widely known living poet in human history should now be so resoundingly neglected in official literary circles only four decades after her death. How is it that her whole unusually varied output can be represented by the same predictable two or...