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Life of Edna Saint Vincent Millay
Edna Saint Vincent Millay was born on February 2nd, 1892, in Rockland, Maine (//Poets.org//). She was the eldest of three sisters. Her father was a superintendent of a school and her mother was a musician. When Millay was seven, her parents divorced and Millay’s mother took care of Millay and her sisters. Millay’s mother taught her daughter to write poems. Many of Millay’s early poems won prizes in the children’s magazine //St. Nicholas// (__Women of Words__). In 1912, at the urge of her mother, Millay submitted her poem "Renascence” into a national contest. The poem won fourth place and was published in //The Lyric Year.// The critical acclaim from “Renascence” also enabled Millay to get a scholarship to Vassar. During her time at Vassar, Millay continued to write poetry. In 1917, she published her first book, //Renascence and other Poems//. Millay moved to Greenwich Village later in life, where she lived a very Bohemian lifestyle. She was openly bisexual and had many different sexual liaisons (//Poets.org//). She supported herself by writing poems, plays, and some short stories (__Women of Words__). Her poetry garnered her much acclaim, called by critics as “youthful” (__Greenwood Encyclopedia__). In 1922, Millay became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize with her fourth volume of poems, “The Harper Weaver”. In 1923, Millay married Eugen Boissevain, who worked as her publicity manager (//Poets.org//). In 1928, while giving a poetry recitation at the University of Chicago, Millay met George Dillon, another poet. The two had a love affair, and Millay's book, //Fatal Interview,// was inspired by this romance (__The Poetry Foundation__). //Fatal Interview// is a collection of fifty-two sonnets, including the sonnet "Love is Not All" (__Women of Words__)//.// The book was widely popular at the time, and received positive reviews from critics (__The Poetry Foundation)__. With the start of World War II, Millay began to write political propaganda to assist the war effort. However, her poems were not well received, and the propaganda diminished her reputation as a creditable writer. While Millay had been widely popular in the 1920s, critics began to look less favorably on her writing during the 1940s. Later in her life, Millay spent most of her time at her private farm, which she called Steepletop (__The Poetry Foundation__). Millay died in 1950, a year after her husband (//Poets.org).//