Sarah B. Royal’s poetic identity is radically different from Edna St. Vincent Millay and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—yet she shares their Maine roots and their drive to reshape poetic language for their time. Her style, if it can be defined, is often surreal, mathematically symbolic, neurodivergent, and nonlinear, as seen in her Palindromic play, fusion poetry, and genre-defying chapbooks.

Her similarities to Edna St. Vincent Millay include poetry that is lyrical, emotionally charged, feminist, and often formal. She has revived the sonnet with modern themes in her book, 35 Sonnets for the 21st Century.

In comparing her to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, much of her work is narrative, musical, romantic, and moralistic. Her mythic poetry, such as Threading the Veil and her Phantasia poems, will again popularize American mythic storytelling.

Royal’s work—like 777: A Story of Idol Worship and Murder—feels like poetic circuitry: logic and emotion sparking across unconventional forms. Much of her poetry is emotionally lush and formally precise, while other pieces are sweeping, rhythmic epics that will shape the future of American literary identity.

Her work is a bustling strip mall food court, serving up mythology, identity, spiritual inquiry, post-2020 cultural shifts, including feminism, love, rebellion, and mortality, spanning subjects on American history, morality, legend, and grief.

Millay and Longfellow were literary celebrities in their lifetimes. Royal, by contrast, is more of a poetic insurgent—her work thrives in niche, interdisciplinary spaces, often outside traditional publishing and academic institutions, with a cult following in experimental circles.