For Lucy, whose feistiness is posilutely poetic & very Vincent.—J.M.F For the babies—Matthew, Mason, Otis, Luca, and Ivy.—E.V. Starflower wouldn’t exist without the scholarship and artistry of Dr. Nancy Milford’s incomparable biography Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Millay. We hold great admiration for Milford (1938–2022), who took thirty-one years to write this story, finding documents inside piano benches and researching from the road in her antique convertible. We would also like to thank Patrick Kerwin at the Library of Congress for assisting us with essential research of archival images.
‘For my Arlo, whose zest for life, inquisitiveness, and curiosity continually gives me new eyes. Thank you to the beautiful Maggie, Rosie, and Lola for bringing the Millay sisters to life.—J.D.
Text copyright © 2023 J. M. Farkas and Emily Vizzo Illustrations copyright © 2023 Jasmin Dwyer Photographs from the Millay Papers and poems (“Afternoon on a Hill,” “To Kathleen,” “Portrait by a Neighbor”) by Edna St. Vincent Millay reprinted courtesy of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, the Millay Society (millay.org). Book design by Melissa Nelson Greenberg Published in 2023 by CAMERON + COMPANY, a division of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available. ISBN: 978-1-951836-51-1 Printed in China 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CAMERON KIDS is an imprint of CAMERON + COMPANY CAMERON + COMPANY Petaluma, California www.cameronbooks.com
STArFLOWer The Making of a Poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay
by
J. M. Farkas + Emily Vizzo illustrated by Jasmin Dwyer
G
ood things come in threes, like peas like wishes like sisters.
Kathleen was the youngest & tenderest. Norma, the middle, was singiest. And Edna, the eldest, was fieriest (her hair was red as her heart).
The Millays tangled in the bayberry bushes & queen of the meadow, the hardhack & rose hips. Traded secret names beneath the maple trees. Indeed, those sisters were singular. True like arrows, sparkle-dark as fireflies. Some might say the Millay girls were haughty, but they liked what they liked. And what did they like best? Too easy. They liked each other.
When Edna was born, her name was like a song: Edna St. Vincent Millay— but everyone called her Vincent. Not all girls are named after a hospital in New York City, Vincent told the rose hips. I recognized the world right away.
Vincent learned to read from Romeo and Juliet; nothing less would do. “Mother gave me poetry,” she often said, as if poems were dandelions— something bright & ferocious to hold in your hands.
Cora Lounella Buzelle was not like other mothers. She was ambitious & unordinary & wanted the same for her daughters. What other mother had better books than the library? What other mother would steal the whole show?
Musical notes floated along the front porch. I’ll take the pedals; you work the keys! Mother called from above dancing knees.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was only seven when she watched her father cross the cranberry bog to the railway station. Cora told Henry to go & never come back. But Cora was brave. Who needed Henry anyway? Camden, Maine: 100 Washington Street. The Millays moved to the smallest house on the loneliest road in the poorest part of town. Stenciled apple blossoms down the windowpanes, filled a pail of blueberries for supper.
Luckily the ocean was the biggest thing in the world. Wilder even than the woods! Every day swung open to a swoony new sea.
Not all girls eat salty air. But the Millay sisters did.
But what other mother was always away? Cora had to earn a living. Buy meat for growing, hungry girls. As a nurse, she traveled for months at a time. Alone at home, the girls felt almost like orphans. If they forgot to fill the lamps, they fumbled, lightless. If they didn’t stoke the fire, they trembled in the cold. Cold, cold. Forty-degrees-below cold. So cold your mouth could only hold one icy-blue word.
Until Vincent bloomed with an idea: I’ll tear off the roof. It wasn’t much to scale those walls, kneel on the splintery shingles & rip them away. What a cozy flame they made. A miserable night is less miserable when your sisters share the bed. Vincent’s hair rivered warm across the pillows & beneath the layered quilts.
They had a river once too. The Megunticook was thrashy & rude. Sometimes the mills dyed it daisy yellow & pennyroyal purple. In the winter it would overflow, pushing past the front door & freezing on the kitchen floor. No mind. Those Millay sisters laced on skates & made forever eights, whirled like tiny tornadoes on that glassy rink. Trust Vincent to carve her name with the edge of a silver blade.
True, the girls kept busy drawing birds & naming wildflowers, but that’s not the same as a mother.
Life is still better unbittered. Take it from Vincent! She could divide the day like buttermilk cake.
Arise at six, breakfast at seven. Busy hands among the plants not once but twice a day. Harvest boneset. Pluck buttercups. Glean lavender. Arithmetic, iron, mend & mail.
Then: Norma sorts buttons neatly in silver tins. Kathleen cleans the lima beans. The Poet crushes flies.
Vincent had a private list: Dream up sonnets. Race her savage pen across the page, rally unruly words & thorny lines. (Sisters know to tiptoe when a poet’s door is closed.)
Though the dishes never did wash themselves. Stove untended, toast untoasted, Vincent scribbled among her papers instead. But you just never knew with Vincent. She was moodier than the moon. One moment she was sweet as peonies & the next she thundered with rage. One time her sister’s mouth made Vincent so angry she stuffed it with geranium leaves. One time mad looked like a knife in a tree.
When sickness came the house turned sour. Nothing helped, not sherry, not oranges. Not even poems. A skyless, starless month. The sisters wilted, saw their shining hair fall out. Mother finally returned until their fevers dimmed & her daughters got steadily better. Promised to dip her pencil in rubbing alcohol, send oven-baked letters.
And then, she was gone again. Vincent lay her cheek against the organ’s quiet keys.
But life could be lovely still. Important still. Things can always be more astonishing. In springtime the sisters packed their sardine sandwiches & fancy cookies, made magnolia crowns. Ran the timothy fields with long ribbons: Pink. Blue. Sweetest green. Which belonged to which was anybody’s guess.
Never forget. Longing comes & goes, but sisters know how to stay. The meadow inside you—forever, Millay.
When the house slept, Vincent slipped into the darkness. The sky was solace, science, an empty hand. In the hour of Halley’s Comet, Vincent stood among the night flowers & searched for any sign of blaze. But the sky towered black & unbothered. Fine, I have invention & comet-fire enough inside!
And then (perhaps, in a whisper): Who needs shooting stars when you have brilliant sisters?
ABOUT EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY Not long after Halley’s Comet crossed the sky in 1910, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s life would change forever. When Vincent recited the poem “Renascence” at the inn where her sister worked, a wealthy patroness was so impressed, she helped pay Millay’s college tuition. Vincent dazzled her classmates at Vassar and would go on to establish herself in New York City with an unrelenting talent and legendary magnetism. In 1923, she became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in poetry and would emerge as one of the most beloved and highly regarded poets of her generation.
blue. She stood up to classmates who bullied her and even the principal (who once threw a book at her!). Vincent was editor-in-chief of the school paper and played on the basketball team. She notoriously skipped her graduation class photo to have pictures taken in town instead, wearing huge bows in her hair and a triple-strand pearl necklace. After barely graduating college, Millay moved to Greenwich Village and eventually Europe, writing all the way. She was an actress, journalist, playwright, and librettist who also spoke six languages. As a political activist, Millay fought injustice, particularly against women.
Born in Rockland, Maine, In 1925, Millay and her husband on February 22, 1892, bought Steepletop, an abandoned Vincent began writing blueberry farm, where she as a child. She disguised devoted herself to poetry and her name so that gardening. After surviving a car readers wouldn’t know accident, she struggled with it belonged to a girl and addiction and died at age fiftythen published poems in eight on October 19, 1950. St. Nicholas, a children’s Edna St. Vincent Millay magazine that also Edna St. Vincent Millay’s formal Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC featured writers such as poetry, notably her sonnets and Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain. At sixteen, Vincent couplets, changed the way we think about poetry. Millay compiled sixty-one poems in an indexed brown copybook wrote boldly and brutally about things most people she called The Poetical Works of Vincent Millay. don’t have the courage to talk about—being poor, lonely, ambitious, furious, jealous, and achingly joyful. She also Famous in her small town for rule-breaking and wrote about the demands of love. Her poems challenged assertiveness, Vincent did as she pleased. She dressed audiences to imagine a world where girls and women proudly in pink when everyone said redheads should wear might live full and unconventional lives.
AUTHORS’ NOTE The influence of Vincent’s powerful mother (on her poetry and identity) has been well documented. Working carefully with the historical record as both educators and poets, we made the deliberate decision to follow Vincent’s growing imagination and to map the gravitational pull of another undeniable force: her sisters. That we are forever shaped by people who leave or are lost is a familiar story, in children’s literature especially. Starflower faces the steady constellations— the ones who stay.
Norma and Kathleen Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC
Story note: the scene depicting the sisters’ illness borrows details from a time when they were younger and living in a different home.
Schedule: Do It Now Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC
AFTERNOON ON A HILL I will be the gladdest thing Under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers And not pick one. I will look at cliffs and clouds With quiet eyes, Watch the wind bow down the grass, And the grass rise. And when lights begin to show Up from the town, I will mark which must be mine, And then start down!
TO KATHLEEN Still must the poet as of old, In barren attic bleak and cold, Starve, freeze, and fashion verses to Such things as flowers and song and you; Still as of old his being give In Beauty’s name, while she may live, Beauty that may not die as long As there are flowers and you and song.
PORTRAIT BY A NEIGHBOR Before she has her floor swept Or her dishes done, Any day you’ll find her A-sunning in the sun! It’s long after midnight Her key’s in the lock, And you never see her chimney smoke Till past ten o’clock! She digs in her garden With a shovel and a spoon, She weeds her lazy lettuce By the light of the moon, She walks up the walk Like a woman in a dream, She forgets she borrowed butter And pays you back cream! Her lawn looks like a meadow, And if she mows the place She leaves the clover standing And the Queen Anne’s lace!