Experience the poem “Never May the Fruit be Picked” by Edna St. Vincent Millay as you follow the text up, down, around, and inside life-size representations of its key poetic images — a dormant tree, an apron, orchard bins, and fallen fruits — in a luminous sculptural installation.
Video by George Berlin (georgeberlin.com)
INSPIRATION
Sometimes a poem leaps off the page at you. Sometimes it quietly drops a seed that starts rooting down to later stretch out branches and offer leaves, blossoms, fruits. The latter we have found true of “Never May the Fruit Be Picked” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), a creative figure who refused to let the norms of her time hinder her explorations of life, sexuality, and art.
With metaphors drawn from horticulture and the seasons, the poem presents to readers a stark reminder that our human experience is ephemeral — love’s waxing and waning in particular — and at the same time, it revels in how juicy and delicious those moments along the journey can be.
Originally published in 1923, the text is now in the U.S. public domain. Our ambition is to reintroduce the poem as a treasure of our cultural heritage to a contemporary audience as a light-based sculptural installation at life-size scale, drawing on the richness of Millay’s artistic legacy that has made our present moment more ripe with possibilities.
MATERIALS
Embracing the poem’s emphasis on ephemerality, the bulk of the materials used in the piece are cleanly biodegradable. The tree form is made from wooden dowels held together with mortise-and-tenon joinery, requiring zero metal fasteners in its construction. This shape is netted with manila rope, suggesting the texture of bark while overall the form remains airy and skeletal.
Hanging along the lines of the tree form are translucent cloth banners that hold the words of the poem (laser-cut). The text A cloth apron left on a ladder and wooden bins resting near the tree also have laser-cut text that continues the poem. For the final line, readers must look inside an open bin.
