And now, a brief word from your favorite nerd
Edna St. Vincent Millay in The NY Times....
So few people will know this about me, but maybe some very longtime friends may.
For many years, Edna St. Vincent Millay occupied the place in my heart titled "Number One Favorite Poet." Yes! Even more than my beloved Lord Byron (aka my bad imaginary boyfriend, which explains a lot in another way, especially with all we know now about the great queer, disabled genius f***up.)
When people tell me they don't love poetry, but they love singer-songwriters, then I refer them to people like Millay. She was extremely famous in her day and toured like modern music artists do today (here's lookin' at you Swifties!)
I long loved, and knew and could recite one of her bangers that I would have to work to bring back now:
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
WHAT A DELIGHT, then, when this morning I opened an email from The NY Times to discover they are inviting us all--Yes, you, too!--to memorize Millay's magnificent "Recuerdo."
Featuring celebrity readings of stanzas and fun games.
I'm nerdy, of course, so all I needed was to see the woman's name and lose my mind with ecstasy and nostalgia.
But I do invite you to take a break from doom scrolling and instead memorize a poem by a woman who had just as much anxiety as we do today, but who transmuted her pain into both the art of living (at which she was not always great) and the art of verse.
This poem is not stuffy. It's ALIVE. It's eternal. It's urban. It gives carefree but with the subtext of a kind of awareness that joy is fleeting, and we must not miss out on those moments when they come, and poetry and art are methods to capture at least an essence of that experience.
It will enrich your life.
Love ya!
Erin
p.s. Here’s a link to the article:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/books/edna-st-vincent-millay-recuerdo-poem-challenge.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DE8.LIKF.4Umr53sp8VwO&smid=url-share
p.p.s.
To remember your own tired and merry, what days they were on the calendar perhaps forgotten, but someone’s special smile, or the raucous laughter, the way the city lights shone on the pavement, the way the clouds cleared in the moon’s own burlesque, a feeling of wild abandon, to have touched the Dionysian mystery as ancient as humanity, participating in an aliveness, reverberating, quivering, singing.
Monday morning, perhaps it is; overwhelmed with the business of life, certainly I am.
But Recuerdo. Recuerdo. Recuerdo…
Such that…
I am. I am. I am.