Centennial celebrates Roaring poet who retreated to Columbia County
She claimed she couldn’t attend the day’s class at Vassar College due to “being in pain with a poem.” She wrote a hymn for her class’ graduation ceremony, but was almost kicked out of college a few days before the commencement for spending the night off-campus at a local hotel (presumably, with a man).
Edna St. Vincent Millay was a rebel and noted socialite of the Roaring 1920s, who was named after the New York City hospital where doctors saved the life of her over-inebriated uncle while she was in utero. After a successful and lustful run in the city, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet retreated to 300-acres in Austerlitz, Columbia County in 1925 (paying just $9,000 for the lot), and filled her days writing on the land, doting on sunken gardens, swimming and running around nude, and imbibing in the mystique of the woods where she lived until her death in 1950, at 58-years-old.
Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,
And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing
The summer through, and each departing wing,
And all the nests that the bared branches show,
And all winds that in any weather blow,
And all the storms that the four seasons bring.
You go no more on your exultant feet
Up paths that only mist and morning knew,
Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat
Of a bird’s wings too high in air to view,—
But you were something more than young and sweet
And fair,—and the long year remembers you.
– Sonnet III: “Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring” from Renascence, and other poems (Harper, 1917) by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
This weekend, June 14-15, 2025, Steepletop – named for the wildflowers that dotted the landscape around Millay’s house – will be open to the public for tours one hundred years after Millay’s first embrace with the land. An awards ceremony honoring the winners of the 2025 Edna St. Vincent Millay Regional Student Poetry Contest will officially kick off Steepletop’s Centennial Open Days on Saturday, June 14, 2025 at 1pm.
Saturday’s Open Days event will also include a performance by Liz Queler and Seth Farber, three-time Grammy nominees, who will be playing from The Edna Project, a collaboration between the couple that sets 21 poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay to music, including “Elegy Before Death,” “Keen,” “The Pond,” “The Little Hill,” “When the Year Grows Old,” “Song,” and “The Return from Town.”
Open Days continue on July 12 with a special walk-through and performance by singer-songwriter Erin McKeown. A limited number of tickets are available for docent-led tours of Millay’s home. See more at https://millay.org/event-calendar/
Rare sighting at Steepletop
A Silver-bordered Fritillary, a rare butterfly species, was recently discovered at Steepletop, the home of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, in Columbia County. It was the first reported sighting of the Silver-bordered Fritillary in Columbia County since 1976.
In addition to this recent spotting – set apart by the Meadow Frit by its distinct necklace of white pearls along the trailing wing edge – rare species have been recorded at Steepletop over the past 20 years: the Aphrodite Fritillary, the Grey Comma, the Coral Hairstreak and, now, the Silver-bordered Fritillary.
“We are not quite sure what makes these meadows such a haven for rare plants and butterflies,” says Conrad Vispo of the Hawthorn Valley Farmscape Ecology Program. “Perhaps it’s a quality of the soil, perhaps it’s a quirk of land use history, or perhaps it’s some deeper poetry of place…”
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