What do you think?
Rate this book
The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell
We sell Rare, out-of-print, uncommon, & used BOOKS, PRINTS, MAPS, DOCUMENTS, AND EPHEMERA. We do not sell ebooks, print on demand, or other reproduced materials. Each item you see here is individually described and imaged. We welcome further inquiries.
607 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1955
1 person is currently reading
399 people want to read
About the author
Amy Lowell
191 books87 followersA leader of the imagists, American poet Amy Lawrence Lowell wrote several volumes, including
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
(1914).
A mother bore Amy into a prominent family. Percival Lowell, her brother and a famous astronomer, predicted the existence of the dwarf planet Pluto; Abbott Lawrence Lowell, another brother, served as president of Harvard University.
The Lowell family deemed not proper attendance at college for a woman, who instead compensated with her avid reading to nearly obsessive book collecting. She lived as a socialite and traveled widely; a performance of Eleonora Duse in Europe inspired her, who afterward turned in 1902. In 1910, Atlantic Monthly first published her work.
She published A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass , apparently first collection, in 1912. In 1912, rumors swirled that supposedly lesbian Lowell reputedly lusted for actress Ada Dwyer Russell, her patron. Her more erotic work subjected Russell. The two women traveled together to England, where Lowell met Ezra Pound, a major influence at once and a major critic of her work. Mercedes de Acosta romantically linked Lowell despite the brief correspondence about a memorial for Duse that never took place, the only evidence that they knew each other.
Lowell, an imposing figure, kept her hair in a bun and wore a pince-nez. She smoked constantly and claimed that cigars lasted longer than cigarettes. A glandular problem kept her perpetually overweight, so that Witter Bynner once called her a "hippopoetess," and Ezra Pound repeated this cruel comment. Her works also criticized French literature, and she penned a biography of John Keats.
People well record fetish of Lowell for Keats. Pound thought merely of a rich woman, who ably assisted financially the publication and afterwards made "exile" towards vorticism. Lowell early adhered to the "free verse" method.
Lowell died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 51 years. In the following year of 1926, people awarded her the posthumous Pulitzer Prize for What's O'Clock . People forgot her works for years, but focus on lesbian themes, collection of love, addressed to Ada Dwyer Russell, and personification of inanimate objects, such as in The Green Bowl , The Red Lacquer Music Stand , and Patterns caused a resurgence of interest.
A mother bore Amy into a prominent family. Percival Lowell, her brother and a famous astronomer, predicted the existence of the dwarf planet Pluto; Abbott Lawrence Lowell, another brother, served as president of Harvard University.
The Lowell family deemed not proper attendance at college for a woman, who instead compensated with her avid reading to nearly obsessive book collecting. She lived as a socialite and traveled widely; a performance of Eleonora Duse in Europe inspired her, who afterward turned in 1902. In 1910, Atlantic Monthly first published her work.
She published A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass , apparently first collection, in 1912. In 1912, rumors swirled that supposedly lesbian Lowell reputedly lusted for actress Ada Dwyer Russell, her patron. Her more erotic work subjected Russell. The two women traveled together to England, where Lowell met Ezra Pound, a major influence at once and a major critic of her work. Mercedes de Acosta romantically linked Lowell despite the brief correspondence about a memorial for Duse that never took place, the only evidence that they knew each other.
Lowell, an imposing figure, kept her hair in a bun and wore a pince-nez. She smoked constantly and claimed that cigars lasted longer than cigarettes. A glandular problem kept her perpetually overweight, so that Witter Bynner once called her a "hippopoetess," and Ezra Pound repeated this cruel comment. Her works also criticized French literature, and she penned a biography of John Keats.
People well record fetish of Lowell for Keats. Pound thought merely of a rich woman, who ably assisted financially the publication and afterwards made "exile" towards vorticism. Lowell early adhered to the "free verse" method.
Lowell died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 51 years. In the following year of 1926, people awarded her the posthumous Pulitzer Prize for What's O'Clock . People forgot her works for years, but focus on lesbian themes, collection of love, addressed to Ada Dwyer Russell, and personification of inanimate objects, such as in The Green Bowl , The Red Lacquer Music Stand , and Patterns caused a resurgence of interest.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 28, 2018
I’ve always been a big fan of Amy Lowell, not only for her poetry but also by the fierceness with which she lived her life - quite rebellious for her time and quite impressive for ours. This is another instance in which I feel the writer’s words are more powerfully expressed without my own interpretation, so I am just including three poems that I like from this longer anthology. The last two are love poems, yet still are more muted odes to her lover. I will say however, with this first one, she is certainly not subtle about the subject of her female lover...but hey, Shakespeare pretty much invented sexual slang...
“The Weather-Cock Points South”
I put your leaves aside,
One by one:
The stiff, broad outer leaves;
The smaller ones,
Pleasant to touch, veined with purple;
The glazed inner leaves.
One by one.
I parted you from your leaves,
Until you stood up like a white flower
Swaying slightly in the evening wind.
White flower,
Flower of wax, of jade, of unstreaked agate,
Flower with surfaces of ice,
With shadows faintly crimson.
Where in all the garden is there such a flower?
The stars crowd through the lilac leaves
To look at you.
The low moon brightens you with silver.
The bud is more than calyx.
There is nothing to equal a white bud,
Of no color, and of all,
Burnished by moonlight,
Thrust upon by a softly-swinging wind.
- - Amy Lowell
———————-
“The Giver of Stars”
Hold your soul open for my welcoming.
Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me
With its clear and rippled coolness,
That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,
Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.
Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me,
That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire,
The life and joy of tongues of flame,
And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune,
I may rouse the blear-eyed world,
And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten.”
- Amy Lowell
——————-
“Before the Altar”
Upon the wings
Of shimmering moonbeams
I pack my poet’s dreams
For you.
My wearying strife,
My courage, my loss,
Into the night I toss
For you.
Golden Divinity,
Deign to look down on me
Who so unworthy
Offers to you;
All life has known,
Seeds withered unsown,
Hopes turning quick to fears,
Laughter which dies in tears...
...Empty and silent, I
Kneel before your pure, calm majesty...
...I pour my heart and watch it burn,
Myself the sacrifice; but be
Still unmoved: Divinity.”
- - Amy Lowell
————————-
“The Weather-Cock Points South”
I put your leaves aside,
One by one:
The stiff, broad outer leaves;
The smaller ones,
Pleasant to touch, veined with purple;
The glazed inner leaves.
One by one.
I parted you from your leaves,
Until you stood up like a white flower
Swaying slightly in the evening wind.
White flower,
Flower of wax, of jade, of unstreaked agate,
Flower with surfaces of ice,
With shadows faintly crimson.
Where in all the garden is there such a flower?
The stars crowd through the lilac leaves
To look at you.
The low moon brightens you with silver.
The bud is more than calyx.
There is nothing to equal a white bud,
Of no color, and of all,
Burnished by moonlight,
Thrust upon by a softly-swinging wind.
- - Amy Lowell
———————-
“The Giver of Stars”
Hold your soul open for my welcoming.
Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me
With its clear and rippled coolness,
That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,
Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.
Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me,
That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire,
The life and joy of tongues of flame,
And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune,
I may rouse the blear-eyed world,
And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten.”
- Amy Lowell
——————-
“Before the Altar”
Upon the wings
Of shimmering moonbeams
I pack my poet’s dreams
For you.
My wearying strife,
My courage, my loss,
Into the night I toss
For you.
Golden Divinity,
Deign to look down on me
Who so unworthy
Offers to you;
All life has known,
Seeds withered unsown,
Hopes turning quick to fears,
Laughter which dies in tears...
...Empty and silent, I
Kneel before your pure, calm majesty...
...I pour my heart and watch it burn,
Myself the sacrifice; but be
Still unmoved: Divinity.”
- - Amy Lowell
————————-
April 3, 2022
This collection encompasses the sputtering misfires of Lowell’s early work (A Dome of Many-Colored Glass); her competent exercises in developing mastery (Sword Blades and Poppy Seed; Men, Women and Ghosts; Can Grande’s Castle); her manifesto of the Imagist Movement, Pictures of the Floating World, including the elegant “Chinoiseries” and “Planes of Personality,” which contains her most delicately wrought pieces that flare with eroticism and burn away the dross that obscured the purity of the images in her earliest work; her versified travelogue, Legends; her study of the great Chinese poets, Fir-Tower Tablets; A Critical Fable, her critique of American poets of her day; and What’s O’Clock, the work that finally won Lowell a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize, albeit posthumously, in 1926.
Favorite poems:
“Patterns”
“Chinoiseries”
“Venus Transiens”
“Madonna of the Evening Flowers”
“The Weathercock Points South”
“The Garden by Moonlight”
“A Shower”
“Summer Rain”
“Left Behind”
“Strain”
“November”
“Nostalgia”
“A Decade”
“Penumbra” (OMG!)
“Frimaire”
“Free Fantasia on Japanese Themes”
“Violin Sonata by Vincent D’Indy”
“Trees”
“Dawn Adventure”
Favorite poems:
“Patterns”
“Chinoiseries”
“Venus Transiens”
“Madonna of the Evening Flowers”
“The Weathercock Points South”
“The Garden by Moonlight”
“A Shower”
“Summer Rain”
“Left Behind”
“Strain”
“November”
“Nostalgia”
“A Decade”
“Penumbra” (OMG!)
“Frimaire”
“Free Fantasia on Japanese Themes”
“Violin Sonata by Vincent D’Indy”
“Trees”
“Dawn Adventure”
October 5, 2015
I discovered Amy when I was in college. "Patterns" is one of the best poems ever written.
December 19, 2016
"No céu há uma lua e estrelas,
E no meu jardim há mariposas amarelas
Agitando-se em torno do arbusto de azáleas brancas".
Read
June 20, 2011I really didn't get very far, to page 41 maybe. Lowell is probably a genius, but I just can't get into it. Maybe pick it up again someday.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews