Welcome to The Third Fig Review where you will find articles, interviews, and poems, and get perspectives into what Millay House Rockland is doing both creatively and materially, as we continue to nurture poetry and the arts in midcoast Maine.

July 2025 • Issue No. 2 • The Sonnet

“A sonnet is a moment’s monument”

—Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sonnet (1881)

The July Third Fig looks at the sonnet. We asked Maine poets to give their thoughts on the form, as both readers and as writers. How do they engage with it? Do they love it, hate it, revel in it, respect it, or is it complicated? For poets today, what are the risks and rewards of turning to this old-fashioned yet surprisingly updatable form . . .

Welcome to Issue No. 2

  • Sonnets: More Than Pretty Rooms by Mark Raymond

  • A Profile of Millay House Rockland Board President Meg Weston

  • An Interview with Maine Poet Laureate Julia Bouwsma

  • 3 of Vincent’s Sonnets Examined by: Claire Millikin, Meghan Sterling, and Mark Raymond, and a Sonnet Tribute to Vincent by Lonny Saleeby

  • Thoughts on the Sonnet from Maine Writers

  • Millay House Rockland Announcements

Featured
Thoughts on the Sonnet from Maine Poets
Thoughts on the Sonnet from Maine Poets

We asked Maine poets: “What are your thoughts on the sonnet? As a writer? As a reader? " We heard from prizewinners and laureates and from young poets just beginning to write. Here are their thoughts . . .

Featured
Sonnets: More Than Pretty Rooms
Sonnets: More Than Pretty Rooms

by Mark Raymond

“Poetry is a natural or morbid secretion from the brain. . . . the same humours which vent themselves in summer in ballads and sonnets, are condensed by the winter’s cold into pamphlets and speeches.”
— Alexander Pope, “Peri Bathos or the Art of Sinking in Poetry” (1728)

Interviews

Featured
Living on Millay Hill: An Interview with Julia Bouwsma
Living on Millay Hill: An Interview with Julia Bouwsma

Sixth Maine Poet Laureate Julia Bouwsma, who works as a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, and librarian in the mountains of western Maine, lives on Millay Hill, on a road named Millay Hill Road in small-town New Portland, Maine . . .

Meg Weston: A Profile
Meg Weston: A Profile

Meet our new Board President Meg Weston.

4 of Vincent’s Sonnets, Examined

Featured
Sonnet XXXVI
Sonnet XXXVI

“Millay’s technical virtuosity here is subtle and gorgeous as she handles the sharp turns of the sonnet, like an experienced seafarer navigating home.”

by Claire Millikin

On Millay’s I WILL put Chaos into fourteen lines
On Millay’s I WILL put Chaos into fourteen lines

“Here Millay, a frequent flier in the sonnet form, explains what the process of writing the sonnet is for her.“

by Meghan Sterling

On Thought in Harness
On Thought in Harness

On Thought in Harness, a transgressively American sonnet . . .

by Mark Raymond

I, being born a woman and distressed
I, being born a woman and distressed

A tribute to Edna St. Vincent Millay

by Lonny Saleeby

Announcements

Thank you for your support of our work at Millay House Rockland. We’d love to hear from our MHR members. Questions, comments, or thoughts on Millay, our work at the house, please reach out and contact us.