What Lips My Lips Have Kissed by Daniel Mark Epstein

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed by Daniel Mark Epstein

This is the story of a rare sort of American genius, who grew up in grinding poverty in Camden, Maine. Nothing could save the sensitive child but her talent for words, music, and drama, and an inexorable desire to be loved. When she was twenty, her poetry would make her famous; at thirty she would be loved by readers the world over.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was widely considered to be the most seductive woman of her age. Few men could resist her, and many women also fell under her spell. From the publication of her first poems until the scandal over Fatal Interview twenty years later, gossip about the poet's liberated lifestyle prompted speculation about who might be the real subject of her verses.

Using letters, diaries, and journals of the poet and her lovers that have only recently become available, Daniel Mark Epstein tells the astonishing story of the life, dedicated to art and love, that inspired the sublime lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Daniel Mark Epstein is the author of biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Aimee Semple McPherson, Nat King Cole, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, as well as Aimee Semple McPherson, Nat King Cole, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. There are seven books of poetry by Vincent Millay. His poetry has published in magazines such as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review, among others. Epstein received the Rome Prize and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977 and 2006, respectively. Daniel Mark Epstein is a Baltimore resident. Daniel Mark Epstein's website is www.danielmarkepstein.com.