Lands Away: Literary Reviews & Fiction Writing

Edna St. Vincent Millay - "Only Until This Cigarette Is Ended" One of my all time favorite poets is Edna St. Vincent Millay. Not only was she a badass Pulitzer Prize laureate who looked undeniably sexy in a pair of high-waisted trousers, she was also a prominent feminist and social activist who lived in Greenwich Village at the height of its fashionable Bohemian era. She was famous for her numerous short-lived affairs with people of all genders, something she was incredibly and quite bravely open about given the time period (Millay lived from 1892 to 1950). Her work inspired another of America's greatest female poets (and a fellow Pulitzer winner), Mary Oliver, who befriended Millay's sister and even lived in Millay's house for a while following her death. Nancy Milford, the author of Millay's biography, wrote, " Millay was the first American figure to rival the personal adulation, frenzy even, of Byron, where the poet in his person was the romantic ideal...

For my inaugural literary criticism post, I chose one of my favorite poems of all time, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot. It's what first brought Eliot his fame and is considered one of the greatest works of modernist literature. Ever since I first read “Prufrock” I have been pretty obsessed with it. I’m not sure why I love it so much—it is in no way positive or admirable; really what makes it good at all is not its subject matter but the genius of it and its beauty. Before we get started, go  read the poem  first. Prufrock is essentially the confession of a man who believes his confession will never be repeated by the listener—therefore he rambles in a stream-of-consciousness style narrative without “fear of infamy.” (To use the quotation from Dante which Eliot himself used to introduce the poem.) It honestly reminds me a great deal of a journal entry, though in reality it is even more disjointed than that. Prufrock is a man so hindered by his ...