I know the Face of Falsehood and Her Tongue

WELCOME BACK TO THE CLASSIC CORNER!

Co-Hosts - Ahavati & JohnnyBlaze

Welcome back to the Classic Corner Competitions, Part XXIX, in an ongoing series introducing serious writers of DUP to the most famous classical and modern poets of our time.

Throughout much of her career, Pulitzer Prize-winner Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of the most successful and respected poets in America. She is noted for both her dramatic works, including Aria da capo, The Lamp and the Bell, and the libretto composed for an opera, The King’s Henchman, and for such lyric verses as “Renascence” and the poems found in the collections A Few Figs From Thistles, Second April, and The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. Like her contemporary Robert Frost, Millay was one of the most skillful writers of sonnets in the twentieth century, and also like Frost, she was able to combine modernist attitudes with traditional forms creating a unique American poetry. But Millay’s popularity as a poet had at least as much to do with her person: she was known for her riveting readings and performances, her progressive political stances, frank portrayal of both hetero and homosexuality, and, above all, her embodiment and description of new kinds of female experience and expression. “Edna St. Vincent Millay,” notes her biographer Nancy Milford, “became the herald of the New Woman.”

For more information regarding Millay, please visit the Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edna-st-vincent-millay

Guidelines  

Write a new poem honoring Millay inspired by any one of her poems.

Do NOT copy paste your poem to the competition, it must be linked to your page with the below information.

Do your best to make us feel as though we are reading poems by Millay. The more we feel you "capturing her essence" in "your own words" , the higher you will score. This will involve choice of wording, delivery, subject material, formatting, target audience, ambiguity - a wide range of factors.    

The Rules

1. Two entries per DUP persona.    

2. No extreme erotica; this is open to all ages and can't be viewed with an ECW ( Extreme Content Warning ).    

3. No exact word limit; however, attempt to keep it no more than 250 - 300.    

4. Any form is acceptable ( but studying the poet is advised ).    

** EDITED** 5. Webmiss HAS created #EdnaStVincentMillay in the theme list.  The page will automatically generate as soon as eight entrants hashtag the theme. Make sure you hashtag her in your themes or you will be disqualified.

6. In your poem's notes, provide links to the poem by Millay that inspired yours. Without this, we have no way of determining if you were truly inspired by Millay, or simply swapped fresh words into her existing poetry and form, which could be considered plagiarism.

Comp will be judged by Ahavati & JohnnyBlaze. As in the past and in the event there is a tie, we will call in third ( and possibly fourth ) judge.

You have one month; best of luck to all entrants!

Non-entry entry

[interjection] Webmiss HAS created the theme for #EdnaStVincentMillay; therefore, rule #5 has been edited to reflect such.[/end interjection]

non entry

Final week to enter reminder notice.  Best of luck to all entrants!

Thank you for all the amazing entries and for supporting the CCComps. You have roughly 24 hours to double-check your entries for spelling, grammar, themes, and inspirational poem listing in your author's notes. These comps are tough to judge; sometimes it comes down to ONE small detail that was overlooked.

Best of luck to you all.

Thank you each for honoring Millay with such wonderful emulations. We could really feel the sincerity of your offerings. These competitions are always so difficult to judge  because it can come down to a simple typo between two contenders.

That being said, congratulations to the following winners:

First Place nomoth “If in letter form she had left…”

Hope despite circumstance. That is the pure essence of Millay's inspirational poem, ("Even in the moment of our..."). Yours left us breathless, I must admit. Your poem is every bit as classic as the classics in style, vocabulary, and metaphor. While Millay's may seem a simple hope beyond a spring frost which killed the early buds, there is also a deep metaphor woven amid the vines of love which has been lost to worldly elements being fulfilled at a later time.  Timing.

You nailed that hope and made it personal toward the object of your affections, though in a vague, third-party-esque  manner that is so often prevalent in classic forms. Particularly those poems Millay is so famously known for.

robin's rubric red was a phenomenal display of classic alliteration at its finest. What stood out the most for me ( Ahavati ) was your vocabulary. It was fresh, unique, and exciting in use; it became sparks on the reader's tongue.

Beautiful entry, and to be completely honest, it's one of the most beautiful poems I have ever read. Congratulations on your win, and thank you for supporting the classics.  

Second Place PoetsRevenge, If Still Your Orchards Bear (The Apple Tree)

The essence of Millay's If Still Your Orchards Bear is a contemplative one from the present moment. The narrator begins by contemplating what someone standing in that very spot would be thinking and observing ten thousand years from now. Millay brilliantly projects her own classic style of vagueness which draws the reader's personal interpretation into play, i.e. -

And memories hard to bear at noon,
By moonlight harder still,
[ . . . ]
And live, or so you thought, yet these
All gone, and you still there,

One of Millay's trademark themes is loss without any clue as to how it's been lost, e.g. - unrequited love, dignity, death, abandonment, etc.

This is a particularly heart-breaking verse because it ends with an essence of regret in the expression, i.e. -

A man no longer what he was,
Nor yet the thing he’d planned,

Again, Millay demonstrates her famous vagueness which draws from the reader's personal experience. What was he? What did he plan to be? What did he regret? By not providing the details, the reader subconsciously projects their own personal associations into the poem. What a doleful ending that she would think nothing would change in ten thousand years, and men would be in such need of tears.  

Your poem is beautifully crafted with the old classic feel in relation to rhyme and form. Your essence differs from Millay's, but that could be a matter of personal perspective. Where hers was more contemplative, yours was more observatory in nature. Where hers expressed regret in change, yours was resolute, or accepting i.e. -

Does not look back in vain,
But simply ignores the rain.

What knocked you out of first place was the lack of depth in regards to the hopelessness that Millay projects toward the future in regards to lack of change vs your resolute complacency to simply ignore the rain, which I felt was a metaphor for tears. In that aspect you did very well.

Congratulations on your placement, and thank you for supporting the CCC's.

Third Place: wallyroo92 Time Heals but Remembering...

You, as Honoria, certainly captured the lingering pain that time does not ease in Millay's, 'Time does not bring relief, you all have lied'.  There is also an aspect of self-regret in yours that was not present in Millay's, as thought you attributed this absence, or loss of love to your own actions, whereas Millay left any reason open to interpretation. . .including whether or not the lover has left her or died.  

This is a recurring theme in Millay's poetry, as I also mention in following notations. This incendiary buildup practically forces the reader to insert personal aspects of themselves until their emotions explode. Because who cannot relate to the losing of a love? How that love is lost remains to be known; except from the reader's personal perspective.

This is where your essence of self-regret ( as well as 'lust' ) differs from hers of simple missing, albeit the missing was just as apparent in yours as well. We feel this was you, Wally, inserting his personal experience as demanded by the Millay's brilliant style of writing such open-ended interpretive verses.

On a technical aspect, L3 could've used a bit of work to read more smoothly as such:

And though [s]the[/s] wounds have healed( , ) cruel scars remain,

For this you were awarded Third Place. Congratulations! And thank you for supporting the CCC's.

More notes continued on the next page -- >