Vale Ave

New Directions Poetry Pamphlet #7

by H.D.

Vale Ave — Latin for “Farewell, Hail” — is a hymn to Eros that unfolds as a gorgeous palimpsest of eternal recurrence and reincarnation, charting the course of two lovers who each seek the other across cultures, myths, and centuries. Vale Ave is alchemical — “mystery and portent, yes, but at the same time,” as H. D. writes, “there is Resurrection and the hope of Paradise.”

Genres: Poetry

63 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1991

About the author

An innovative modernist American writer, Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961) wrote under her initials in a career that stretched from 1909 to 1961. H.D., most well known for her lyric and epic poetry, also wrote novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, reviews, a children’s book, and translations. An American woman who lived her adult life abroad, H.D. was engaged in the formalist experimentation that preoccupied much of her generation. A range of thematic concerns resonates through her writing: the role of the poet, the civilian representation of war, material and mythologized ancient cultures, the role of national and colonial identity, lesbian and queer sexuality, and religion and spirituality.

Reviews

[Luna Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Si una historia de amor puede dibujar "todas las historias de amor" este 'Adiós Hola' de H.D. dibuja sentimientos hermosos sobre el deseo, la escritura y la fe. Tal vez una de mis secuencias preferidas de H.D. hasta la fecha. Leí la traducción francesa y creo que pronto intentaré hacerme con la edición original en inglés.

[Sarah Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the poetic philosophy on eternal time, but some (most) of the Egyptology was lost on me.

[job]

happy valentines,

[e · Rating 4 out of 5]

New Directions' edition from last year republishes (& handsomely, I might add) a great lost work of our Poetess who is already facing becoming lost herself, falling out of the sight of the literary consciousness at large. The title takes its cue from Swinburne's "Ave Atque Vale", his ode to Baudelaire that, like H.D.'s garden, sets forth an homage in the form of flowers that are flames lit out from arcana, but ramps up the autobiography & interrogative mode & lyrical hermetic meditation you've come to know & love & expect from her. I suppose this has been ignored because it's not of the size of a Helen in Egypt or "Winter Love" from Hermetic Definition among her later works but I'd wager this is in her top three long poems she ever wrote. Essential.

For all the thrones and letters spell one story,
and only one, Love is the altar that we burn upon.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading in the new "new directions" reissue! I love that it is now a chapbook, and the original one I read i think was hardback, which was so unwieldly.

[Eleanor Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this collection. Classical, religious, and historical themes come up again and again while the poems themselves interweave across time.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine writing, as is usual for HD, and subject matter that loops in and around several different love stories over various centuries--I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to figure that out without her short introduction. What is the poem "about"? Hard to say. Very oblique and strange, also not unusual for HD.

[Phebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

again!