Selected Poems of Amy Lowell
Amy Lowell (1874–1925), American poet and critic, was one of the most influential and best-known writers of her era. Within a thirteen-year period, she produced six volumes of poetry, two volumes of criticism, a two-volume biography of John Keats, and countless articles and reviews that appeared in many popular periodicals. As a herald of the New Poetry, Lowell saw herself and her kind of work as a part of a newly forged, diverse, American people that registered its consciousness in different tonalities but all in a native idiom. She helped build the road leading to the later works of Allen Ginsberg, May Sarton, Sylvia Plath, and beyond. Except for the few poems that invariably appear in American literature anthologies, most of her writings are out of print. This will be the first volume of her work to appear in decades, and the depth, range, and surprising sensuality of her poems will be a revelation.
The poetry is organized according to Lowell’s characteristic forms, from traditional to experimental. In each section the works appear in chronological order. Section one contains sonnets and other traditional verse forms. The next section covers her translations and adaptations of Chinese and Japanese poetry, whereby she beautifully renders the spirit of these works. Also included here are several of Lowell’s own Asian-influenced poems. Lowell’s free, or cadenced verse appears in the third part. The last section provides samples of Lowell’s polyphonic prose, an ambitious and vigorous art form that employs all of the resources of poetry.
The release of The Selected Poems of Amy Lowell will be a major event for readers who have not been able to find a representative sampling of work from this vigorous, courageous poet who gave voice to an erotic, thoroughly American sensibility.
Amy Lowell may ascend again in reputation to join the list of more canonical moderns like Frost, Pound, Wallace Stevens and H.D.(Hilda Doolittle). This volume may start the ascendancy.
I cannot imagine a finer introduction to LowellÆs poetry for both the general reader and scholar. At last we can begin to reassess Lowell in relationship to the other American poets of her generation.
What a joy to have Amy LowellÆs brilliant, pioneering, long-underestimated poems back in print! This beautifully introduced and selected volume is sure to be welcomed by a range of general readers as well as by revisionary historians of modernism, feminist critics, and students of American poetry.
A wise selection of Amy LowellÆs poetry has been long overdue, and this attentively edited volume makes the range of her work in verse and patterned prose attractively available.
Melissa Bradshaw is an assistant professor of interdisciplinary humanities at Barat College of DePaul University.
Adrienne Munich is a professor of English and womens studies at SUNY Stony Brook. She is the author of Queen Victorias Secrets and Andromedas Chains: Gender and Interpretation in Victorian Literature and Art and coeditor of Arms and the Woman and Remaking Queen Victoria.
A Note on the Text
Introductions
``Let us Shout it Lustily'': Amy Lowell's Career in Context / Melissa Bradshaw
Amy lowell, new american poet / Adrienne Munich
Chronology
I. Traditional Forms and Variations
Sonnets, Rhymed Stanzas, and Blank Verse -
A Fixed Idea
On Carpaccio's Picture: The Dream of St. Ursula
The Starling
Mirage
A Petition
In Answer to a Request
Eleonora Duse
To a Lady of Undeniable Beauty and Practised Charm
Before the Altar
Apology
After Writing ``The Bronze Horses''
Merely Statement
Gavotte in D Minor
Song for a Viola D'Amore
Nuit Blanche
On Looking at a Copy of Alice Meynell's Poems, Given Me, Years Ago, by a Friend / The Sisters
Adapted Asian Forms and Translations from the Chinese -
Aliens
The Pond
A Lover
To a Husband
A Year Passes
Ephemera
Autumn
One of the ``Hundred Views of Fuji'' by Hokusai
The Fisherman's Wife
Outside a Gate
In Time of War
Li T'ai-po
Frosty Evening
A Poet's Wife
The Return
Nuance
Autumn Haze
Nuit Blanche
Again the New Year's Festival
Time
Nostalgia
Afterglow
Vespers
The Battle to the South of the City, by Li T'ai-po
The Retreat of Hsieh Kung, by Li T'ai-po
The Terraced Road of the Two-Edged Sword Mountains, by Li T'ai-po
Looking at the Moon after Rain, by Li T'ai-po
The Lonely Wife, by Li T'ai-po
On Hearing the Buddhist Priest of Shu Play His Table-Lute, by Li T'ai-po
Parrot Island, by Li T'ai-po
Reply to an Unrefined Person Encountered in the Hills, by Li T'ai-po
Night Thoughts, by Li T'ai-po
In the Province of Lu, to the East of the Stone Gate Mountain, Taking Leave of Tu Fu, by Li T'ai-po
A Poem Sent to Tu Fu from Sha Ch'iu Ch'eng, by Li T'ai-po
The River Village, by Tu Fu
The Sorceress Gorge, by Tu Fu
At the Edge of Heaven, Thinking of Li Po, by Tu Fu
Sent to Li Po as a Gift, by Tu Fu
A Toast for Meng Yun-ch'ing, by Tu Fu
The Blue-Green Stream, by Wang Wei
Together We Know Happiness, written by a descendant of the founder of the Southern T'ang Dynasty
II. Cadenced Verse In a Garden
Absence
Aubade
White and Green
The Captured Goddess
The Taxi
The Blue Scarf
The Letter
Pine, Beech, and Sunlight
Astigmatism
The Giver of Stars
Bright Sunlight
Venus Transiens
A Rainy Night
Patterns
Strain
from Stravinsky's Three Pieces ``Grotesques,'' for String Quartet, Second Movement
Summer Rain
A Decade
An Aquarium
Thompson's Lunch Room---Grand Central Station
Opal
Mise en Scene
Wakefulness
A Bather
Madonna of the Evening Flowers
from Dreams in War Time
A Sprig of Rosemary
The Broken Fountain
The Weathervane Points South
The Artist
Vernal Equinox
Penumbra
September. 1918
Granadilla
Carrefour
Lilacs
Meeting-House Hill
Footing Up a Total
Paradox
Purple Grackles
In Excelsis
On Reading a Line Underscored by Keats
Dissonance
Heraldic
Attitude under an Elm Tree
Sultry
The On-looker
Poetic Justice
Mid-adventure
Anecdote
Still Life
III. Polyphonic Prose
Spring Day
from Malmaison
from Sea-Blue and Blood-Red
from Guns As Keys: And the Great Gate Swings
Notes to the Poems
