Another extraordinary poem by an extraordinary woman; in many ways she seems decades ahead of her time. Edna St Vincent Millay was born in 1892 and died in 1950; although she had many intimate relationships with women, she was married for twenty-six years, and obviously in those days she was married to someone of the opposite sex. Her middle name was St Vincent and from being a child she called herself ‘Vincent’.
An odd coincidence came to light when I was reading about Millay; many years after her death, her sister, Norma, was helped to organize Vincent’s papers by another poet Mary Oliver. I had never heard of her before today when this morning a friend mentioned Oliver to me and is going to send me some of her poems, now I am reading about her again. What a coincidence!
Witch-Wife
She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.
She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun ’tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.
She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
Lois Elsden 
Oh, do read Mary Oliver!
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I must!
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I had not thought of Edna St. Vincent Millay in decades! Back then, in my 20s, I had a craze for her work, shared by many ofher (female) 20-somethings of the era. Do you know her poem that starts “I burn my candle at both ends…”? Very succinct, wry, mordant.
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Actually I have read it, but never quite clicked who the author was… she certainly is someone I must get to know better! She sounds an extraordinary person – I wonder if I would have liked her in real life? Sometimes strong people can be a little overpowering in reality!
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