Edna St Vincent Millay

ESVM was a charismatic American poet of the earlier twentieth century, who through her lifestyle came to stand for the sexually and economically liberated woman of the 1920s. She wrote particularly sonnets, love lyrics, and plays, as well as short stories, a libretto, and life-writing in the form of diaries and letters. From the beginning her work included passionate anti-war writing, which paved the way during the early years of the second world war for polemic against America's isolationist stance. Her later poems reach a deeper and more serious register, but by then her reputation was already in sharp decline. In 1937 John Crowe Ransom accused her of deficiency in masculinity. Though later commentators have generally been more tactful and less crass, a more recent poet, J. D. McClatchy , observes that this kind of venomous condescension has echoed down the years.