Among the prominent contemporary poetesses in American literature is Edna St. Vincent Millay. Born in 1892, she has been publishing her poetry continuously since 1912. She is counted among the most widely famous of American poets, and the reading public in her country prefers her to all her fellow poets.
Her poetry is distinguished by its vehemence, by its care for words and expressions, and by its portrayal of her personal states of soul on the one hand, and the aspects of her society on the other.
There is no consolation in time.
You all lied when you told me that time would lighten my pains! I miss him in the rivers of the rain, and I need him at the ebbing of the tide. See, the old snows are melting on the mountainsides, and the aged leaves of the trees scatter into dust at the turnings of the road, but it is the bitter love, the love of the year gone by, that remains encamped upon my heart, and my old thoughts are not effaced. There are a hundred places I fear to visit — for they brim with his memory. And if I enter, at my ease, some quiet place his foot never trod, and where his face never shone, I say: "He has no memories here!" And I stand stricken — for by that very thought I have remembered him.
Al-Khansa — what is al-Khansa?... She is nothing but a lark upon the branches, weeping for the loss of her mate. If the moaning of the turtledove stirs you, then the poetry of al-Khansa cannot fail to stir you. For it is the very distillation of suffering feeling, of the bleeding soul, of a sister's bereaved fidelity.
Her poetry is a model of tenderness without weakness, and the very banner, uncontested, of the elegy of feeling.
...Her elegy is pure feeling, unalloyed by any artifice: she is a mourner who will not be consoled, a weak woman who cannot bring herself to preach patience to her own soul... And perhaps hyperbole is the most evident characteristic of her poetry.
She lived in the seventh century, and was surnamed al-Khansa for the beauty of her eyes; and in the first part of her life she was among the most beautiful women of her age.
...She is the greatest poetess among women, and surpasses many of the master poets among men. (From "The Men of Letters of the Arabs" by al-Bustani.)
O my