John Timberman Newcomb’s article, titled “The Woman as Political Poet: Edna St. Vincent Millay and the Mid-Century Canon,” discusses Millay’s preoccupation toward social discourse, as well as her shift from feminist love poetry to a focus on “progressive political dissidence” (261) and social critique. In his article, he outlines the event which prompted Millay’s social-mindedness, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1927. This trial, of which Millay was an avid protestor, served to excite “a fundamental and permanent shift in the tone of her poetry” (262), in which she viewed poetry as not merely an art form, but having the powers of a social dialogue, able to elicit conversations about various political issues and educate the masses about the state of the world around them. She saw that “one of the central social functions of poetry as that of protest and resistance against the powerful forces of xenophobic paranoia and intolerance” (262), and used poetry to express her displeasure with various injustices and social inequalities that plagued America’s society and judicial system. According to Newcomb, poetry and politics were, to her, quite similar in purpose; she “saw no contradiction, no barrier, between the two discourses…they could draw upon the same organizing patterns of imagery, tone, and methods of address” (265).
In his article, Newcomb also sets up the various criticisms that rose up against Millay’s poetry, made by men who considered female poets overly sentimental and governed by “personal moods” (273). Critics such as John Crowe Ransom and John Ciardi both advocated that women were too emotional and personal in their poetry, and were thus not to be taken seriously, and were “ultimately to be outgrown” (276) when a person grows beyond adolescence. These critics of the female poet express the patriarchal refusal of feminine intelligence and its attempt to demean the woman’s artistic talent, couching the works firmly in the realm of mere sentimental love poetry where the female is unable, according to them, to grow beyond this categorization. However, Millay greatly contrasted these ideas of sentimentality and hyper-femininity in her use of conversational dialogue, socially-concerned topics, and intelligent discourse, intermingling her new political dialogues and social critiques with her earlier feminist language. In this expression she is considered “a prototype of the “modern woman”…in her assertion of the right to and need for female self-determination of body, mind, pocketbook, and voice” (262), and Newcomb believes she extended this self-determination and sense of fairness to “[create] a space for political polyphony, in which everyone’s argument is accorded a hearing” (270).
Fascinating overview of Newcomb’s article; this does much to situate her work in the context of a very much male-dominated criticism that emerged during the mid-century. That was also a criticism, as we know from 299, that backed away from explicit social / political messages in art and tended to view art apart from its informing contexts–something Loy was clearly not interested in mimicking. Great post! Next time, be sure to link to important info–in this case the S&V trial that did so much to ignite artistic response.