and made her into an international citizen, which
proved important to her poetry during the coming
war years.
1920s–1940s U.S. Politics
In Greenwich Village, Millay had not been inter-
ested in politics, thoughshe wrote for the pacifist
cause. Then, in 1927, she participated in protests
in Boston over the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Nic-
ola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were two Ital-
ian immigrants, admitted anarchists, who were
tried for acts of terrorism. It is generally acknowl-
edged they were not given a fair trial and were
executed more for their politics than for what they
might have done. There were riots all over the
world on their behalf, and many intellectuals,
including George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells,
Bertrand Russell, John Dos Passos, and Dorothy
Parker, took up their cause. Millay wrote the
poem ‘‘Justice Denied in Massachusetts,’’ which
was printed in theNew York Times.Shewasina
crowd of protestors arrested in Boston, and she
continued to write letters and articles protesting
the injustice. Indeed, the case woke her political
conscience.
In 1932 Millay began a series of radio broad-
casts that brought her poetry to the general public.
The threatening world picture in the 1930s and
1940s intensified her desire to use her writing and
speaking for political causes.Conversation at Mid-
night, published in 1937, was a poetic dialogue
between seven men of differing philosophies. It
was a symposium on current points of view,
from Catholicism to agnosticism, from hedonism
to Communism, that reflected the clashing ideol-
ogies igniting the growing hostilities in the world.
Her collectionHuntsman, What Quarry?(1939)
contained some political poems, such as ‘‘Say
That We Saw Spain Die.’’
In 1940, Millay began writing propaganda
encouraging the United States to enter World
War II, marking a complete renunciation of her
earlier antiwar position. Americans were reluctant
to get into another European war, so she used her
fame and popularity to mobilize public opinion
against Fascism. She read poems on the radio,
including ‘‘There Are No Islands, Any More’’
and other poems collected asMake Bright the
Arrows(1940). ‘‘The Murder of Lidice’’ (1942)
tells about the Nazi extermination of a town in19th-century illustration of Penelope and Ulysses(ÓLeonard de Selva / Corbis)
An Ancient Gesture