Stranger, pause and look;
From the dust of
ages
Lift this little book,
Turn the tattered
pages,
Read me, do not let me die!
Search the fading
letters, finding
Steadfast in the broken binding
All that once was I!
From the “Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay”
Millay has a way of hitting things on the nose. I’m really
enjoying her “Collected Poems” and am reading on the side “Millay at 100: A
Critical Reappraisal” as a part of grad school strategy to not only read more
poetry but to figure out how to read (and understand) it. Meanwhile I’ve snatched up two stanzas from
her poems to kick start two of my own novels (attributed, of course).
The first essay in “Millay at 100” argues that she is
underappreciated in the sense that critics don’t think she’s worth the time to
analysis but academics apparently enjoy quoting her. Perhaps that a good sign
that her poetry is well written, evocative, and easy to understand. For most
people ease of understanding is a sign of good writing, but I suppose critics
need difficult writers to justify their profession.
I chose this quotation above because it speaks to me
personally, and to anyone else out there being an author, regardless of your
publishing success. Anyone’s work could, basically, molder away, become an “ex-poem”
in the sense that no one reads it anymore. The statistical chance of anyone
achieving the literary longevity of Austen or Dickens is depressingly low, and
probably getting lower with 3000 new published books each year crowding for
attention, drowning each other out.
