I Will Put Chaos Into Fourteen Lines

“Haunted by Parents—A Literary Example of Change Meaning Loss: Edna St. Vincent Millay” by Leonard Shengold (2004)

Rather than a literary analysis lens, this article offers a psychoanalytic analysis of Millay and her artistic expression. Using her letters and diaries, Shengold’s research highlights how Millay serves as an archetypal patient, one who is “resistant to change” and who cannot let go of “the internalization of early parental figures.” Shengold provides readers with a portrait of Millay and her literary works.

“‘I Cannot Live without a Macaroon!’: Food, Hunger, and the Dangers of Modern American Culture in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Aria da Capo” by Thomas Richard Fahy (2011)

Fahy takes as his focus one of Millay’s dramatic works, the 1920 play Aria da Capo. A pastoral play featuring shepherds and artists, the work was published when the world was still recovering from Word War I. Fahy analyzes this context apparent in the play, looking at “the brutality of war and excesses of modern American culture as depicted in the decadent food being eaten in the opening scene.” Food takes center stage for Fahy as it illustrates “the apparent ineffectiveness of the Food Administration’s effort for food conservation during the First World War.”

“‘It’s Just a Matter of Form’: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Experiments with Masculinity” by Sarah Parker (2020)

Parker broaches how Millay’s work often toes a line between modern and traditional writing. She shows how her “subject matter may have been modern and daring—voicing women’s sexual independence, for instance” while also following traditional poetic forms and structures. Parker also identifies how Millay “troubles notions of modernist impersonality by writing seemingly autobiographical lyrics that showcase feminine emotions.” To highlight how Millay is more modern rather than traditional, Parker focuses on two works considered “avant-garde”: Aria da Capo and Conversation at Midnight. By providing close readings of these two works, Parker claims that Millay offers provocative challenges to both gender and form.