Not So Far As The Forest

Not So Far As The Forest, commissioned by Detroit’s Juxtatonal (Jocelyn Zelasko and Bryan Hayslett) takes on the final and titular poem from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s five-poem set of the same name. These poems, rife with haunted imagery, death, and decay, paint a stark contrast to Millay’s work from only years earlier, poems that often traffic in confident, sexual, often flippant portraits of a young, openly-queer poet rising and thriving in a world that often tried to pin her down or diminish her. This shift in tone came from a tremendous loss: having spent time in France and having a brief and ill-fated romance with a French artist which left her pregnant, she retreated to rural England with her mother, with whom she was alway svery close—and while there, her mother brewed a medicinal tea, without her daughter’s knowledge or permission, that aborted Edna’s pregnancy. (There are conflicting accounts of how much Edna knew of this before or after.) What is certain is that Edna remained sick for months after this, only fully recovering some four or five years later. Retreating back to upstate New York, where she was born, Edna purchased her Steepletop residency, where she spent the rest of her life—and the first poems she wrote upon picking the pen back up were these five poems. This titular poem follows a bird whose wings have been clipped and, having attempted an escape, is left lying in the barren field between the comfortable home and the native forest. The narrator’s voice, addressing the bird, is liltingly bitter and critical, positing finally that a “once confined thing is never again free.” (Note: I would love to set all five of these poems—if this interest you, please do reach out!)