An Ancient Gesture

“An Ancient Gesture” is a lyric poem by the prolific 20th-century poet and Pulitzer Prize-winner Edna St. Vincent Millay. The poem’s speaker is an emotional, hard-working woman who compares herself to a woman from Greek mythology, Penelope, the distraught wife who anxiously waits for her husband, Ulysses (or, as it’s more commonly spelled, Odysseus), to return from war. As with Millay’s more well-known poems—“First Fig” (1920) and “Thursday” (1922) among them—the poem sends the message that there’s nothing wrong with a woman exhibiting strong emotion. Aside from gender and keen feelings, the poem deals with the struggle of life and reflects Millay’s ability to pair modern sensibilities with classical literature, as the drama between Penelope and Ulysses plays out in Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. Ladies’ Home Journal first published “An Ancient Gesture” in 1949—the year Millay’s husband, Eugen Boissevain, died and one year before Millay died. Norma, one of Millay’s two sisters, published the poem in a posthumous collection of poems she edited, Mine the Harvest (1954).

Poet Biography

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, February 22, 1892. Her mom, Cora, divorced her undependable dad, Henry, early in her life and raised Millay and her two younger sisters, Norma and Kathleen, with the help of family members.