Edna St Vincent Millay (1892-1950) was one of the most popular American writers of her generation, and the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Thomas Hardy once remarked that America had only two great wonders to show the world: skyscrapers, and the poetry of Edna St Vincent Millay. She was a brilliantly innovative verse technician finding latent energies in traditional forms and discovering new means of her own to express what her editor Colin Falck calls 'her complex and extremely subtle feminist consciousness, her almost Blakean sense of the mysteriousness of ordinary life.' Millay's work is resistant to theory, yet she has never forfeited the love of general readers and a new generation will still discover one of the most accomplished and passionate poets of the last century.; Tristram Fane Saunders lives in London and works as a journalist. His poems appear in Carcanet's New Poetries VIII anthology, and his latest pamphlet is Woodsong (SmithDoorstop, 2019). He is The Telegraph's poetry critic.
'Poems and Satires is more a reintroduction of a once-ubiquitous voice than a full reckoning of Millay's poetic achievement, but seeing most of her best work in new covers is heartening.' Declan Ryan, Poetry Foundation 'This elegant paperback, with Art Deco flappers gracing the cover, a sprightly introduction, a revolutionary reordering, and new prose material, will recommend itself to readers who think they are familiar with Edna St Vincent Millay as much as to a new young readership for whom she will be an enviable discovery.' A.E. Stallings, Times Literary Supplement