“Some time ago, while looking through the pages of an old workbook, I came upon one poem which I remember vividly: the first sonnet I ever wrote. This, although it was written as a practice-piece, an exercise in sonnet-composition, and not intended ever to be published, I am printing it in this foreword, as an object of possible curiosity and interest to the readers of my Collected Sonnets.” -From Collected Sonnets, Edna St. Vincent Millay
The poem that follows hardly seems to be for practice, masterfully combining all of the details of the sonnet into a magnificent work of art. This highlights Edna St. Vincent Millay’s innate knowledge of her most-used form, only further evidenced by the delightful collection of her work bound together in this book. Collected Sonnets, published in 1941, is Millay’s first collection that consists of only sonnets. Within it, one can not only see the skill of a master at work, but gain a true sense of the woman behind the words.