"Rapturous . . . [Epstein] extols Millay, persuasively, as 'America's foremost love poet.'"—Merle Rubin, The Wall Street Journal

"Epstein's book is comprehensive and tidy at the same time. Its passions are those of a poet who understands and admires Millay's craft while not quite escaping the fate that snared many another male poet: falling in love with her."—Clarinda Harriss, The Baltimore Sun

"[Epstein] writes with acuity and grace about the young Millay's determination, yearnings, and intellectual spirituality . . . Epstein's keen reading of Millay's poetry and temperament is smart, stirring, and invaluable."—Donna Seaman, Booklist

"Well researched and briskly narrated."—Judith Thurman, The New Yorker

"Epstein creates a rendering worthy of the poet's energetic life."—People

"A passionate paean . . . A terrific volume that supplements rather than supplants Nancy Milford's Savage Beauty, Epstein presents Millay (1892-1950) as an erotic dynamo whose serial sexual encounters and rich love life inspired her finest poems, which he praises with a lexicon of superlatives . . . Epstein begins on a night in 1911 with a riveting account of the nubile, nightgowned Millay writing in her notebook and chanting by candlelight. He then leaps backward to the story of mother Cora Millay before settling into a chronology from which he does not often deviate . . . Epstein is a phrasemaker, consistently delighting with apposite metaphors and piquant comments on her verse. He chronicles her wild years at Vassar, her cometary appearance in the literary sky with 'Renascence' (1912), her arrest for supporting Sacco and Vanzetti, her Pulitzer, and her enormous popularity. He accuses academic critics—who have often disdained Millay—of doing her 'a grave injustice, mistaking clarity and unity for triviality.' With great compassion, he charts Millay's sad decline into alcoholism, drug addiction, and depression. A powerful prose-poem whose subject is the language of love—and the poet who sang in no other tongue."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)