Lit FQ 35-36

To which of the following publications did Edna St. Vincent Millay submit her breakthrough poem?

• Poetry Magazine

• The Lyric Year

• Vanity Fair

• The New Yorker

• St. Nicholas Magazine

Answer explanation

In 1912, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s mother encouraged her to submit to The Lyric Year, which held an annual poetry contest, where Millay gained recognition for her breakthrough poem “Renascence.”

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Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Renascence” is best known for its

• overt satire and witty tone

• embrace of free verse and modernist fragmentation

• blend of common and elevated language

• critique of industrial capitalism

• rejection of traditional poetic devices

Answer explanation

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Renascence” showcased qualities that would define her later work, including precise attention to form and a blend of elevated and conversational language.

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Which of the following colleges offered Edna St. Vincent Millay a scholarship?

• Radcliffe

• Smith

• Bryn Mawr

• Vassar

• Wellesley

Answer explanation

After publishing “Renascence,” Edna St. Vincent Millay received scholarship offers from Barnard and Vassar, eventually attending Vassar, where she studied Greek, Latin, and comparative literature.

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Which of the following poetry collections was Edna St. Vincent Millay’s FIRST?

• Second April

• A Few Figs from Thistles

• Renascence and Other Poems

• The Buck in the Snow

• The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems

Answer explanation

Edna St. Vincent Millay published her first poetry collection, Renascence and Other Poems, in 1917.

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Edna St. Vincent Millay published short stories under the pseudonym

• Nancy Boyd

• Arthur Stone

• Elizabeth Bishop

• Cotton Mather Mills

• Currer Bell

Answer explanation

Over the course of her career, Edna St. Vincent Millay published poetry collections, opera librettos, translated volumes, short stories under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd, and poetic dramas.

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Edna St. Vincent Millay was the first woman to win the

• Nobel Prize in Literature

• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

• MacArthur Fellowship

• Bollingen Prize

• National Book Award

Answer explanation

In 1923, Edna St. Vincent Millay became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, which had been established in 1917.

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Which of the following events FIRST galvanized Edna St. Vincent Millay’s involvement in political protests?

• the Scottsboro Boys trial

• the passage of the Espionage Act

• the Red Scare deportations

• the imprisonment of Eugene Debs

• the Sacco and Vanzetti executions

Answer explanation

After she emerged as a literary voice of the 1920s, Millay turned to political causes, beginning with her protest of the Sacco and Vanzetti executions in 1927 and continuing with her antifascist poetry in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

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Which of the following elements does a Petrarchan sonnet NOT include?

• a final rhyming couplet

• a changing rhyme scheme

• a constant metrical structure

• a closing sestet stanza

• an opening octet stanza

Answer explanation

A Petrarchan sonnet, like Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “I, being born a woman and distressed,” consists of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter, with an octet (ABBAABBA) followed by a sestet (usually CDCDCD or CDECDE).

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In a Petrarchan sonnet, the volta represents

• a repetition of the opening line

• the final couplet

• a shift in the poem’s thought

• the emotional climax

• a return to the original theme

Answer explanation

The volta in a Petrarchan sonnet, the rhetorical or emotional “turn,” typically occurs at the start of the ninth line, marking a shift in argument or perspective.

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Which of the following words marks the volta in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “I, being born a woman and distressed”?

• “find”

• "possessed"

• "however"

• "propinquity"

• "treason"

Answer explanation

In Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “I, being born a woman and distressed,” the volta is signaled by the word “however,” which appears midway through the ninth line.

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