Conversation at Midnight (1937) is a dramatic verse play by Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet known for her lyrical intensity and modernist edge. Departing from her usual sonnets, this experimental work unfolds as a heated philosophical debate among seven men gathered in a Manhattan apartment on the eve of World War II. Through rhythmic dialogue, they clash over communism, capitalism, religion, art, and existential meaning, embodying the anxieties of the 1930s—from economic collapse to rising fascism.
Millay’s wit and moral urgency shine as the characters—a poet, a priest, a businessman, a radical, and others—reveal their vulnerabilities. The play’s abrupt ending (a gunshot offstage) underscores her warning about the era’s ideological fractures. Though criticized at publication for its “talky” abstraction, it’s now read as a prescient mirror of our own polarized times.
For similar works, try The Cocktail Party (1949) by T.S. Eliot for another high-stakes conversational drama, or Millay’s Huntsman, What Quarry? (1939) for her return to personal lyricism.
