Edna St. Vincent Millay’s A Few Figs from Thistles: ‘Constant only to the Muse’ and Not To Be Taken Lightly

This article reconsiders the complicated production and reception of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s early poetry, especially that of A Few Figs from Thistles. Millay’s language of gender and sexual liberation in this 1920s volume received the label of “light verse,” valences of which continue to affect readings across Millay’s oeuvre. Looking to resituate the critical severity of A Few Figs from Thistles, this piece uses archival research and material culture to rethink the volume’s original appearance and Millay’s later release of two “revised” editions. Rather than recant rhetorically on the text’s idiom of the New Woman, these redactions function as strategies for its critical redistribution. Unable to remain the equivalent of a radical figure above reality of consequence, the Millay of A Few Figs from Thistles reflects a poetic consciousness that understands the intricate nature of social resistance.