Founding
In 1973 Norma Millay Ellis, an artist and the sister of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (who preferred to be called Vincent from a young age), founded the Millay Colony for the Arts as an artist residency, inviting her friends and others to come live and work in a small building on the Steepletop estate.
Over the next 53 years, the Millay Colony for the Arts, now Millay Arts, has provided a space for artists to live, grow, and create. Norma died in 1986 at the age of 92. Her dedication to providing the gift of time and space to artists, along with her sister’s genius, inform the enduring mission and vision of Millay Arts to this day.
Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library. “Millay sisters” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1930. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/b86731f1-6353-3e0b-e040-e00a180617f4
Vincent
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine on February 22, 1892. Raised by a single mother along with her two sisters, she preferred to be called Vincent from a young age. She published her first poem, Renascence, at age twenty and her first book Renascence and Other Poems in 1917. Upon graduating from Vassar, she moved to NYC’s Greenwich Village and immediately became a fixture on the literary scene.
Vincent and her sister Norma soon joined the Provincetown Theatre Group, and in 1918, she directed and took the lead in her own play, The Princess Marries the Page. In the next several years, openly bisexual and gender-nonconforming, she explored sexuality and feminism in her poems and attracted a series of high-profile male and female lovers. Experiencing a meteoric rise in fame and popularity, she travelled around the country to colleges and universities giving poetry readings attended by frenzied fans (much like the rock stars today). By 1923, she was one of the first women recognized for literary achievement and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
In 1923 Vincent married the Dutch merchant Eugen Boissevain. Their “open marriage” was a source of both controversy and admiration. Vincent lived, worked, and hosted legendary gatherings (clothes of any sort were banned from the pool) from 1925 until her accidental death from a fall in 1950.
Steepletop
In the mid-1920’s, Vincent and Boissevain, purchased a 635-acre blueberry farm in Austerlitz, New York, a country hamlet in Columbia County, just a few hours from New York City. Vincent told her mother she had found “a piece of heaven,” and named the property “Steepletop” after the Steeplebush plant that blossomed in the fields.
After Vincent’s death, Norma Millay Ellis and her husband, the painter Charles Ellis came to live at Steepletop in 1951, where they continued Vincent’s legacy and founded the Millay Colony for the Arts. Forging partnerships with longtime friends, Norma was instrumental in building the organization’s endowment as well as initiating funding partnerships that last to this day, including the Roscoe Lee Browne Foundation that annually funds a poet of color.
Norma donated the Barn to the Colony in 1976, to make space for additional Artists-in-Residence. Renovated to accommodate four artists with a private studio and bedroom for each, the Barn is a special place, where gifted residents dive deep into their process — essential to create exceptional work — inspired by both the history and the quiet tranquility of the setting. The Main House was built in the mid-1990’s, in collaboration with Millay board, staff, and artists with a range of disabilities. The goal was to design an environmentally-friendly building featuring ADA-accessible bedrooms, studios, and living spaces.
Edna St. Vincent Millay holds a sign in protest of the Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. Photo courtesy of the Millay Society.
Progressive
Vincent was also a fierce activist, giving voice to those she felt were silenced. She was strongly against WWI, and in 1927, she was arrested for protesting the (then proposed) execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Edmund Wilson, the influential literary critic and writer, defined Vincent as “a spokesman for the human spirit.”
Dirge Without Music
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
