April is National Poetry Month!

I was gonna post some of Millay's later, more modernist poetry just to round out the blitz, but apparently, no one else cares about it at all, because I can't find any of it online. Unfortunately, her more modernist poetry is distinguished by being rather long with a lot of line breaks, so I don't really want to type it up myself. So you just get some more of the traditionalist stuff from earlier in her career.


"Afternoon on a Hill," Edna St. Vincent Millay.

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!



"Spring," Edna St. Vincent Millay.

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.