Chapter 28 - The Formalist Modernism of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Helene Johnson, and Louise Bogan

Summary

The lyric poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Helene Johnson and Louise Bogan is in conversation with modernist experiments, although each of these poets emphasized different aspects of twentieth century politics and culture and, at least to some extent, aspired to reach different audiences. Millay had wide popular appeal during her career and is still read beyond the academy. Johnson has always been obscure beyond her literary circle. Bogan was better known as a critic than a poet and is now read chiefly by other writers. Millay's poetic oeuvre is remarkable for the variety of received, modified, and invented forms she employs, but she is most admired for her dexterity with the sonnet. Johnson magnifies the poem's latent tension by establishing iambic pentameter and then disturbing aural pattern. Bogan certainly resisted the strictures of her Catholic upbringing and describes her teenaged self as a radical and a Fabian.