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Selected Poems of Hilda Doolittle
"Like every major artist she challenges the reader's intellect and imagination."--Boston Herald Selected Poems, the first selection to encompass the rich diversity of Hilda Doolittle's poetry, is both confirmation and celebration of her long-overdue inclusion in the modernist canon. With both the general reader and the student in mind, editor Louis L. Martz of Yale University (who also edited H.D.'s Collected Poems 1912-1944) has provided generous examples of H.D.'s work. From her early "Imagist" period, through the "lost" poems of the thirties where H.D. discovered her unique creative voice, to the great prophetic poems of the war years combined in Trilogy, the selection triumphantly concludes with portions of the late sequences Helen in Egypt and Hermetic Definition which focus on rebirth, reconciliation, and the reunion of the divided self.
275 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 1957
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534 people want to read
About the author
H.D.
129 books331 followersAn 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
July 6, 2021
Blue-geese, white-geese, you may say,
yes, I know this duality, this double nostalgia;
I know the insatiable longing
in winter, for palm-shadow
and sand and burnt sea-drift;
but in the summer, as I watch
the wave till its edge of foam
touches the hot sand and instantly
vanishes like snow on the equator,
I would cry out, stay, stay;
then I remember delicate enduring frost
and its mid-winter dawn-pattern;
in the hot noon-sun, I think of the grey
opalescent winter-dawn; as the wave
burns on the shingle, I think,
you are less beautiful than frost;
but it is also true that I pray,
O, give me burning blue
and brittle burnt sea-weed
above the tide-line,
as I stand, still unsatisfied,
under the long shadow-on-snow of the pine
yes, I know this duality, this double nostalgia;
I know the insatiable longing
in winter, for palm-shadow
and sand and burnt sea-drift;
but in the summer, as I watch
the wave till its edge of foam
touches the hot sand and instantly
vanishes like snow on the equator,
I would cry out, stay, stay;
then I remember delicate enduring frost
and its mid-winter dawn-pattern;
in the hot noon-sun, I think of the grey
opalescent winter-dawn; as the wave
burns on the shingle, I think,
you are less beautiful than frost;
but it is also true that I pray,
O, give me burning blue
and brittle burnt sea-weed
above the tide-line,
as I stand, still unsatisfied,
under the long shadow-on-snow of the pine
Read
November 27, 2013Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961) was an American poet who moved to London in 1911, where she remained until she removed to Switzerland in 1946. She was an early feminist and an unapologetic bisexual. Indeed, over lengthy periods of time she was involved in ménages à trois. At the age of fifteen she met Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams when they were students at the University of Pennsylvania. So they were friends from the beginning, 5 or 6 years before the movement called Imagism began. Pound was her first love.(*) Though she has written some novels, memoirs and essays, I know her as a poet, one of the original Imagists who revolutionized American poetry in the first decades of the 20th century and whose impact, for better and worse, has been felt in American poetry down to our day.
The Selected Poems offers a selection of poetry from her entire career and can therefore provide the reader unfamiliar with her work an opportunity to decide which books he/she would like to examine in more detail. Though known primarily as an Imagist, her poetry is generally more rhetorical than pure Imagism would admit. And, of course, her style evolved over the course of her life and left Imagism behind. She had a particular attachment to ancient Greek literature and mythology, and this interest expressed itself many ways in her poetry, in her choices of topics and in the language and images she choose to explore these topics.
I'd like to let you read a few examples to see if you would like to follow up with these Selected Poems. First, a rather imagist poem:
Excerpt from "Garden" (Sea Garden, 1916)
A taste of her Greek side, in which she clearly sympathizes with the woman who was the "cause" of the Trojan War:
Helen (Heliodora, 1924)
All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.
All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.
Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.
Her later work became more complex and lengthy; even in the Selected Poems these later poems are largely excerpted due to their extent. Here is an excerpt from Trilogy (1944-1946) in which she reacts to the German bombing of London in World War II:
(*) For more biographical information and an overview of her work, see this Poetry Foundation link:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/h-d
Rating
http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/701...-
The Selected Poems offers a selection of poetry from her entire career and can therefore provide the reader unfamiliar with her work an opportunity to decide which books he/she would like to examine in more detail. Though known primarily as an Imagist, her poetry is generally more rhetorical than pure Imagism would admit. And, of course, her style evolved over the course of her life and left Imagism behind. She had a particular attachment to ancient Greek literature and mythology, and this interest expressed itself many ways in her poetry, in her choices of topics and in the language and images she choose to explore these topics.
I'd like to let you read a few examples to see if you would like to follow up with these Selected Poems. First, a rather imagist poem:
Excerpt from "Garden" (Sea Garden, 1916)
You are clear
O rose, cut in rock,
hard as the descent of hail.
I could scrape the colour
from the petals
like spilt dye from a rock.
If I could break you
I could break a tree.
A taste of her Greek side, in which she clearly sympathizes with the woman who was the "cause" of the Trojan War:
Helen (Heliodora, 1924)
All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.
All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.
Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.
Her later work became more complex and lengthy; even in the Selected Poems these later poems are largely excerpted due to their extent. Here is an excerpt from Trilogy (1944-1946) in which she reacts to the German bombing of London in World War II:
. . . we pass on
to another cellar, to another sliced wall
where poor utensils show
like rare objects in a museum;
Pompeii has nothing to teach us,
we know crack of volcanic fissure,
slow flow of terrible lava,
pressure on heart, lungs, the brain
about to burst its brittle case
(what the skull can endure!):
over us, Apocryphal fire,
under us, the earth sway, dip of a floor,
slope of a pavement
where men roll, drunk with a new bewilderment,
sorcery, bedevilment:
the bone-frame was made for
no such shock knit within terror,
yet the skeleton stood up to it:
the flesh? it was melted away,
the heart burnt out, dead embers,
tendons, muscles shattered, outer husk dismembered,
yet the frame held:
we passed the flame: we wonder
what saved us? what for?
(*) For more biographical information and an overview of her work, see this Poetry Foundation link:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/h-d
Rating
http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/701...-
March 12, 2014
They should have selected better poems.
November 14, 2019
“It is probably more accurate to say that imagist doctrine was developed to describe the poetry she wrote… According to the reviewers and scholars who wrote about her work in the 1910s and 1920s… her work was very influential in the legitimization of the “modern” style of poetry.” - poetryfoundation.org
Highly recommend checking out poetryfoundation.org to read more about H.D.’s biography. The Introduction to H.D.’s Selected Poems is good; it serves to explain H.D.’s obscurity in the modernist poetry canon until recently, but it does not go into explicit detail about Ezra Pound or Frances Gregg - and let me tell you that is a relationship that the people want to read about it.
H.D. is an imagist poet whose work is “rich in imagistic inference but spare in abstraction and exclamation.” Like many of the literary modernists, H.D. grew up in a Victorian household and challenged the cultural norms of her time in reaction to the Great War and rapid technological change.
One reason given for H.D.’s relative obscurity is because H.D. deals with feminist themes so nobody really cared about championing her work until much later on. Many of her poems are about the integrity of the self and femalehood, and it is mostly told through Grecian myths, which is enjoyable if you are into classics like me. H.D.’s “modern” style of poetry is reflected in the imagist rules that are in accordance with the tradition of Sappho - think evocative fragments and moments of mysterious intimacy. The way the lines are arranged on the page is short and break off, mimicking the sequence of a musical phrase rather than that of a metronome.
H.D. is also a translator, and I quite enjoyed the selections from Helen in Egypt. One lesser-known myth about the Trojan War was that Helen was never at Troy but in Egypt and that the Helen of Troy was actually a phantom created by gods. Of course, this is a very bleak and depressing interpretation of the Trojan War because this makes a mockery of the war, but it’s also an interesting rehabilitation of Helen, particularly in H.D.'s poem.
Splendid collection of modernist poems by a female modernist poet.
Highly recommend checking out poetryfoundation.org to read more about H.D.’s biography. The Introduction to H.D.’s Selected Poems is good; it serves to explain H.D.’s obscurity in the modernist poetry canon until recently, but it does not go into explicit detail about Ezra Pound or Frances Gregg - and let me tell you that is a relationship that the people want to read about it.
H.D. is an imagist poet whose work is “rich in imagistic inference but spare in abstraction and exclamation.” Like many of the literary modernists, H.D. grew up in a Victorian household and challenged the cultural norms of her time in reaction to the Great War and rapid technological change.
One reason given for H.D.’s relative obscurity is because H.D. deals with feminist themes so nobody really cared about championing her work until much later on. Many of her poems are about the integrity of the self and femalehood, and it is mostly told through Grecian myths, which is enjoyable if you are into classics like me. H.D.’s “modern” style of poetry is reflected in the imagist rules that are in accordance with the tradition of Sappho - think evocative fragments and moments of mysterious intimacy. The way the lines are arranged on the page is short and break off, mimicking the sequence of a musical phrase rather than that of a metronome.
H.D. is also a translator, and I quite enjoyed the selections from Helen in Egypt. One lesser-known myth about the Trojan War was that Helen was never at Troy but in Egypt and that the Helen of Troy was actually a phantom created by gods. Of course, this is a very bleak and depressing interpretation of the Trojan War because this makes a mockery of the war, but it’s also an interesting rehabilitation of Helen, particularly in H.D.'s poem.
Splendid collection of modernist poems by a female modernist poet.
July 13, 2012
Very few reviews of Hilda Doolittle here on Goodreads. This makes me sad, because thanks to my poetry class I discovered two very important things about her: a) she exists, and b) When she's not being weird and confusing I really, really like her poetry.
This one's my favorite.
"Sheltered Garden
I have had enough.
I gasp for breath.
Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest --
then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate.
I have had enough --
border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,
herbs, sweet-cress.
O for some sharp swish of a branch --
there is no scent of resin
in this place,
no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,
aromatic, astringent --
only border on border of scented pinks.
Have you seen fruit under cover
that wanted light --
pears wadded in cloth,
protected from the frost,
melons, almost ripe,
smothered in straw?
Why not let the pears cling
to the empty branch?
All your coaxing will only make
a bitter fruit --
let them cling, ripen of themselves,
test their own worth,
nipped, shrivelled by the frost,
to fall at last but fair
with a russet coat
Or the melon --
let it bleach yellow
in the winter light,
even tart to the taste --
it is better to taste of frost --
the exquisite frost --
than of wadding and of dead grass.
For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life.
I want wind to break,
scatter these pink-stalks,
snap off their spiced heads,
fling them about with dead leaves --
spread the paths with twigs,
limbs broken off,
trail great pine branches,
hurled from some far wood
right across the melon-patch,
break pear and quince --
leave half-trees, torn, twisted
but showing the fight was valiant.
O to blot out this garden
to forget, to find a new beauty
in some terrible
wind-tortured place."
Read for: Modern Poetryi
This one's my favorite.
"Sheltered Garden
I have had enough.
I gasp for breath.
Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest --
then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate.
I have had enough --
border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,
herbs, sweet-cress.
O for some sharp swish of a branch --
there is no scent of resin
in this place,
no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,
aromatic, astringent --
only border on border of scented pinks.
Have you seen fruit under cover
that wanted light --
pears wadded in cloth,
protected from the frost,
melons, almost ripe,
smothered in straw?
Why not let the pears cling
to the empty branch?
All your coaxing will only make
a bitter fruit --
let them cling, ripen of themselves,
test their own worth,
nipped, shrivelled by the frost,
to fall at last but fair
with a russet coat
Or the melon --
let it bleach yellow
in the winter light,
even tart to the taste --
it is better to taste of frost --
the exquisite frost --
than of wadding and of dead grass.
For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life.
I want wind to break,
scatter these pink-stalks,
snap off their spiced heads,
fling them about with dead leaves --
spread the paths with twigs,
limbs broken off,
trail great pine branches,
hurled from some far wood
right across the melon-patch,
break pear and quince --
leave half-trees, torn, twisted
but showing the fight was valiant.
O to blot out this garden
to forget, to find a new beauty
in some terrible
wind-tortured place."
Read for: Modern Poetryi
July 26, 2020
Shunning of puns be damned: H.D. really does see reality in high definition, with an Imagist iris. Unlike Pound, she doesn't flaunt her allusions and obsession with antiquity. You get the sense that she literally lives in Ancient Greece and simply channels its spirit (the search for Ideal Beauty, elemental passion) as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The Oracle of Delphi reborn.
"Greek flower; Greek ecstasy
reclaims for ever
one who died
following
intricate songs' lost measure."
-from Epitaph, (her own, of course)
The Oracle of Delphi reborn.
February 3, 2016
I had to swallow this book by the spoonful, rather than in large bites. H.D. was a masterful poet and scholar, but her middle-era poetry tended toward the abstruse in a way I didn't particularly enjoy reading. However, her early poems (from Sea Garden and Hymen), as well as her late works (Trilogy and Helen in Egypt) are vivid, evocative, and puissant. "The Flowering of the Rod," in Trilogy, was a particular favorite. H.D. wrote about bisexuality and female sexual agency in a tone at once grave and jubilant, firm and yet questioning. As a queer woman married to a man, H.D.'s poems cut straight to my heart at times, encapsulating a certain bilateral tug:
"Satisfied, unsatisfied,
satiated or numb with hunger,
this is the eternal urge,
this is the despair, the desire to equilibrate
the eternal variant;
you understand that insistent calling..."
Overall, this is a wonderful selection of her poetry; it gives generous overview and invites further exploration.
"Satisfied, unsatisfied,
satiated or numb with hunger,
this is the eternal urge,
this is the despair, the desire to equilibrate
the eternal variant;
you understand that insistent calling..."
Overall, this is a wonderful selection of her poetry; it gives generous overview and invites further exploration.
September 27, 2015
I wish I understood more of the Greek references but there are moments of total metaphorical brilliance in this collection. Overall, though, I prefer Edna St. Vincent Millay when looking at poets of this era.
June 25, 2008
beautiful verse
July 11, 2008
one of my poetic ancestors. i drew strength from her words and the antagonism with her former lover, E. Pound.
moving stuff.
moving stuff.
September 13, 2021
"Helen, Helen, come home;
there was a Helen before there was a War,
but who remembers her?"
I really wanted to like these poems, but something about the modernist language made them really difficult for me to understand. Nevertheless, I really liked the imagery and how they sound and maybe that's all that really matters with poetry. I wish I knew more about Greek myth, or that this edition had footnotes, so I could understand the context of her poems more. I want to get into her work because I love the aesthetic but it was just a bit beyond me.
there was a Helen before there was a War,
but who remembers her?"
I really wanted to like these poems, but something about the modernist language made them really difficult for me to understand. Nevertheless, I really liked the imagery and how they sound and maybe that's all that really matters with poetry. I wish I knew more about Greek myth, or that this edition had footnotes, so I could understand the context of her poems more. I want to get into her work because I love the aesthetic but it was just a bit beyond me.
September 15, 2023
i love you HD......
January 24, 2019
HD’s constant recourse to Hellenic memes and tropes and chestnut characters and exclamations beginning with “O!”—it grows wearisome after a while, all the cardboard-stage-scenery artifice. But in the best poem in this collection, “The Master,” HD speaks to her mentor—Ezra Pound (unnamed; only referred to as one who “troubled [others’] thought”)—and speaks about a young woman she is in love with. The whole of That Thing We Call Gender, in all its plasmatic occultish birth-of-the-universe splatter, is the subject of this poem; and you’d best believe HD is an expert.
January 17, 2024
"For you will come,
you will come,
you will answer our taut hearts,
you will break the lie of men’s thoughts,
and cherish and shelter us"
<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3
you will come,
you will answer our taut hearts,
you will break the lie of men’s thoughts,
and cherish and shelter us"
<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3
October 30, 2018
EPITAPH
So I may say,
"I died of living,
having lived one hour;"
so they may say,
"she died of soliciting
illicit fervour;"
so you may say,
"Greek flower; Greek ecstasy
reclaims forever
one who died
following
intricate song's lost measure."
----------
I'll take that...
Just perfect.
So I may say,
"I died of living,
having lived one hour;"
so they may say,
"she died of soliciting
illicit fervour;"
so you may say,
"Greek flower; Greek ecstasy
reclaims forever
one who died
following
intricate song's lost measure."
----------
I'll take that...
Just perfect.
July 13, 2007
If you like e. e. cummings, you will like her. I think her writing has a little bit more humanity.
March 8, 2008
I absolutely love her imagery. Much of my art has roots in Hilda and her treatment of mythology. I read it continuously.
July 5, 2013
This was interrupted for several weeks by my surgery.
I particularly liked Eros from Miscellaneous Poems 1914-1917, and A Dead Priestess Speaks from Miscellaneous Poems 193101938(?).
I particularly liked Eros from Miscellaneous Poems 1914-1917, and A Dead Priestess Speaks from Miscellaneous Poems 193101938(?).
August 3, 2014
I had only read a few poems by her before. Reading this collection was like a trip to ancient Greece.
August 29, 2017
Oh wow boy howdy am I re-newedly and completely in love with H.D. and her very, very gay words.
September 13, 2023
Thoroughly enjoyed this one! Such a talented poet of our century yet missing the recognition she deserves. It's outrageous really. Such originality and sophistication!
Many Greek Gods references, nice to read this perspective. Even some Sappho quotes referenced. I picked this up not having heard of H.D.... or expecting it to be soooo gay. I opened one page and there's no denying H.D. was bisexual, what a lovely suprise! I bought it instantly ( :
To list a mere few of my favourite quotes:
"Nothing we have ever felt,
nothing we have dreamt,
or conjured in the night
or fashioned in lonliness
can equal this."
"What is beauty to me?
has she not slain me enough,
have I not cried in agony of love,
birth, hate,
in pride crushed"
"...her bones
under flesh are white
as sand which along a beach
covers but keeps the print
of the crescent shapes beneath:
I thought:
between cloth and fleece,
her body lies."
"If I had been a boy,
I would have worshipped your grace,
I would have flung my worship
before your feet,
I would have followed apart,
glad, rent with ectasy
to watch you turn
your great head, set on the throat,
thick, dark with it's sinews,
burned and wrought
like olive stalk,
and noble chin
and the throat"
"Men cannot mar you,
women cannot break
your innate strength,
your stark autocracy;
still I will make no plea
for this slight verse;
it outlines simply
Love's authority"
"Sometimes I chide the manner of your dress:
I want all men to see the grace of you;
I mock your pace, your body's insolance,
thinking that all should praise, while obstinate
you still insist your beauty's gold is clay..."
"Take me,
O ultimate breath,
O master-lyrist
beat my wild heart to death"
"I have horror
of finality,
I would rather guess,
wonder whether
either of us
could for a moment
endure the other,
after the first fine flavour
or irony
had worn off"
Many Greek Gods references, nice to read this perspective. Even some Sappho quotes referenced. I picked this up not having heard of H.D.... or expecting it to be soooo gay. I opened one page and there's no denying H.D. was bisexual, what a lovely suprise! I bought it instantly ( :
To list a mere few of my favourite quotes:
"Nothing we have ever felt,
nothing we have dreamt,
or conjured in the night
or fashioned in lonliness
can equal this."
"What is beauty to me?
has she not slain me enough,
have I not cried in agony of love,
birth, hate,
in pride crushed"
"...her bones
under flesh are white
as sand which along a beach
covers but keeps the print
of the crescent shapes beneath:
I thought:
between cloth and fleece,
her body lies."
"If I had been a boy,
I would have worshipped your grace,
I would have flung my worship
before your feet,
I would have followed apart,
glad, rent with ectasy
to watch you turn
your great head, set on the throat,
thick, dark with it's sinews,
burned and wrought
like olive stalk,
and noble chin
and the throat"
"Men cannot mar you,
women cannot break
your innate strength,
your stark autocracy;
still I will make no plea
for this slight verse;
it outlines simply
Love's authority"
"Sometimes I chide the manner of your dress:
I want all men to see the grace of you;
I mock your pace, your body's insolance,
thinking that all should praise, while obstinate
you still insist your beauty's gold is clay..."
"Take me,
O ultimate breath,
O master-lyrist
beat my wild heart to death"
"I have horror
of finality,
I would rather guess,
wonder whether
either of us
could for a moment
endure the other,
after the first fine flavour
or irony
had worn off"
December 31, 2019
It is difficult to both rate and describe this volume of poetry. It's images are wonderful, but the author, from what I've read, worked to avoid the label as an Imagist. She writes frequently with Greek themes or inspiration, and often touches on spirituality. However, it is the images themselves that stick after the poem is read. In Never More Will The Wind, "Like a bird out of our hand, / like a light out of our heart, / you are gone." Her poem, The Orchard, is a masterpiece of language, evoking the smell, wet feel, and vibrant colors of the fruit in their orchard. There is an element of the whimsical in Heliodora, "did you ever think / a girl's mouth, / caught in a kiss, / is a lily that laughs?" Turning to spiritual matters, H.D.elegantly compares Christ with a wild goose, "does the first wild-goose top to explain / to the others? no - he is off; / they follow or not, / that is their affair;" and then later more explicitly stating "He was the first to say, / not to the chosen few, / his faithful friends, / the wise and good, / but to an outcast and a vagabond, / to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." I enjoyed these poems - they read easily, leaving the images behind them. At times, they also stir a deeper meaning to contemplate.
November 27, 2023
“They say there is no hope—
sand—drift—rocks—rubble of the sea—
the broken hulk of a ship,
hung with shreds of rope,
pallid under the cracked pitch.
They say there is no hope to conjure you— no whip of the tongue to anger you— no hate of words you must rise to refute.
They say you are twisted by the sea, you are cut apart by wave-break upon wave-break, that you are misshapen by the sharp rocks, broken by the rasp and after-rasp.
That you are cut, torn, mangled, torn by the stress and beat, no stronger than the strips of sand along your ragged beach.” - from “Sea Gods.”
H. D. suggests there is a unspoken beauty and importance in tenacity and strength that is worth more than traditional external beauty. Many of her poems seem to be using precise and short images of less traditional objects in the imagist tradition in order to force us to rethink what we ought to find beautiful and admirable in the first place. It’s a poetry that reconsiders what we find beautiful.
“Sea Rose” describes the sparseness of a sea rose in comparison to a gaudier flowers or a normal rose, yet there is something in its simplicity, much like the poem’s simplicity that compels. Despite being “caught in the drift” and the wind it manages to survive and continue on. There is beauty i a thinks ability to survive and adapt to its environment rather than on more tradition superficial appearances.
“Sea Lily” follows suit in using the image of sea Lily overcoming destruction of elements and made more beautiful and interesting by surviving things in its environment that try to damage and destroy it.
“Evening” use short and precise images to capture the coming of evening and growing shadows covering different flowers only for all specificity of each object to be lost under the darkness at night.
“Sheltered Garden” is a poem where the speaker claims they would prefer a chaotic scene of nature damaged and tossed about by the wind and storms than some sheltered boring and lifeless garden.
“For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life.
I want wind to break,
scatter these pink-stalks,
snap off their spiced heads,
fling them about with dead leaves—
spread the paths with twigs,
limbs broken off,
trail great pine branches,
hurled from some far wood
right across the melon-patch,
break pear and quince—
leave half-trees, torn, twisted
but showing the fight was valiant.
O to blot out this garden
to forget, to find a new beauty
in some terrible
wind-tortured place.”
The sheltered well-ordered garden is stifling for the speaker.
“Sea poppies” are about the beauty of sea poppies.
“The Garden” has a wonderful image of the wind tearing apart the heat.
“O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters. “
“The Sea Violet” follows a similar path as “Sea Rose” in comparing White Sea violets to the blue violets that grow on land.
“The greater blue violets flutter on the hill, but who would change for these who would change for these one root of the white sort?”
“Orchard” presents a being among fruits growing in an orchard as an intense religious experience.
A particular striking image within the poem “Storm” is the way leaves are described with metaphors of other natural objects such as a leaf being “rent like split wood” and sinking like “a green stone.”
“Hermes of the Ways” begins at the sea and ends at the shore “where sea-grass tangled with Shore-grass.” Hermes is invoked as a kind of interstitial being where boundaries between different natural objects meet and intermingle.
The extremely short and direct “Oread” erases the boundaries between the sea and the forest in which both things become one and the same.
“Moonrise” begins with a series of poetic rhetoric questions, but ones that focus on imagery associated with the moon.
“Will you glimmer on the sea?
Will you fling your spear-head
On the shore?
What note shall we pitch?”
“The Tribute” is a poem about a city full of squalor and despair in which the squalid market-place representing commerce and greed have replaced beauty. It is a city representing the modern world in which cheap and worthless are traded for stuff of truth worth like beauty and belief in God.
“Eros” captures the unexpected ecstatic nature of love and passion. It often is not like anything we expect.
“Envy” is about the speakers envy of death after becoming jaded from love and beauty.
“The Islands” is another comparative poem that asks what meaning the famous islands of Greece can have for a person and the speaker compared to beauty.
In “Helen” the poet revisits the old mythological temptress, but as a woman all of Greece hates and loathes for causing the Trojan War. With more practical concerns and past resentments fueling their hatred, they cannot see her fabled beauty.
“Fragment 36” features a speaker who struggles to choose between her passionate love and her poetic inspiration. The two feelings enhance each other; they would be meaningless without the other, but also tantalize and frustrate her in choosing what is more important.
Direct description of the natural object, but often uses a subtle contrast with a more traditional poetic object such as a rose or violet in order to amplify and call attention to the beauty of the less traditional, usually focusing on its tenacity and vitality and ability to survive tough environments.
Her poem “epitaph” which conveniently served as her epitaph on her tomb may serve as the ultimate final word of her poetry and goals:
“So I may say, “I died of living, having lived one hour”;
So they may say, “she died soliciting illicit fervour,” So you may say, “Greek flower; Greek ecstasy reclaims for ever one who died following intricate song’s lost measure.”
She was one who dedicated herself to poetry itself, almost like a kind of religion. Based on this selection, I am definitely interested in checking out the complete collection of her work.
They say there is no hope to conjure you— no whip of the tongue to anger you— no hate of words you must rise to refute.
They say you are twisted by the sea, you are cut apart by wave-break upon wave-break, that you are misshapen by the sharp rocks, broken by the rasp and after-rasp.
That you are cut, torn, mangled, torn by the stress and beat, no stronger than the strips of sand along your ragged beach.” - from “Sea Gods.”
H. D. suggests there is a unspoken beauty and importance in tenacity and strength that is worth more than traditional external beauty. Many of her poems seem to be using precise and short images of less traditional objects in the imagist tradition in order to force us to rethink what we ought to find beautiful and admirable in the first place. It’s a poetry that reconsiders what we find beautiful.
“Sea Rose” describes the sparseness of a sea rose in comparison to a gaudier flowers or a normal rose, yet there is something in its simplicity, much like the poem’s simplicity that compels. Despite being “caught in the drift” and the wind it manages to survive and continue on. There is beauty i a thinks ability to survive and adapt to its environment rather than on more tradition superficial appearances.
“Sea Lily” follows suit in using the image of sea Lily overcoming destruction of elements and made more beautiful and interesting by surviving things in its environment that try to damage and destroy it.
“Evening” use short and precise images to capture the coming of evening and growing shadows covering different flowers only for all specificity of each object to be lost under the darkness at night.
“Sheltered Garden” is a poem where the speaker claims they would prefer a chaotic scene of nature damaged and tossed about by the wind and storms than some sheltered boring and lifeless garden.
“For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life.
I want wind to break,
scatter these pink-stalks,
snap off their spiced heads,
fling them about with dead leaves—
spread the paths with twigs,
limbs broken off,
trail great pine branches,
hurled from some far wood
right across the melon-patch,
break pear and quince—
leave half-trees, torn, twisted
but showing the fight was valiant.
O to blot out this garden
to forget, to find a new beauty
in some terrible
wind-tortured place.”
The sheltered well-ordered garden is stifling for the speaker.
“Sea poppies” are about the beauty of sea poppies.
“The Garden” has a wonderful image of the wind tearing apart the heat.
“O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters. “
“The Sea Violet” follows a similar path as “Sea Rose” in comparing White Sea violets to the blue violets that grow on land.
“The greater blue violets flutter on the hill, but who would change for these who would change for these one root of the white sort?”
“Orchard” presents a being among fruits growing in an orchard as an intense religious experience.
A particular striking image within the poem “Storm” is the way leaves are described with metaphors of other natural objects such as a leaf being “rent like split wood” and sinking like “a green stone.”
“Hermes of the Ways” begins at the sea and ends at the shore “where sea-grass tangled with Shore-grass.” Hermes is invoked as a kind of interstitial being where boundaries between different natural objects meet and intermingle.
The extremely short and direct “Oread” erases the boundaries between the sea and the forest in which both things become one and the same.
“Moonrise” begins with a series of poetic rhetoric questions, but ones that focus on imagery associated with the moon.
“Will you glimmer on the sea?
Will you fling your spear-head
On the shore?
What note shall we pitch?”
“The Tribute” is a poem about a city full of squalor and despair in which the squalid market-place representing commerce and greed have replaced beauty. It is a city representing the modern world in which cheap and worthless are traded for stuff of truth worth like beauty and belief in God.
“Eros” captures the unexpected ecstatic nature of love and passion. It often is not like anything we expect.
“Envy” is about the speakers envy of death after becoming jaded from love and beauty.
“The Islands” is another comparative poem that asks what meaning the famous islands of Greece can have for a person and the speaker compared to beauty.
In “Helen” the poet revisits the old mythological temptress, but as a woman all of Greece hates and loathes for causing the Trojan War. With more practical concerns and past resentments fueling their hatred, they cannot see her fabled beauty.
“Fragment 36” features a speaker who struggles to choose between her passionate love and her poetic inspiration. The two feelings enhance each other; they would be meaningless without the other, but also tantalize and frustrate her in choosing what is more important.
Direct description of the natural object, but often uses a subtle contrast with a more traditional poetic object such as a rose or violet in order to amplify and call attention to the beauty of the less traditional, usually focusing on its tenacity and vitality and ability to survive tough environments.
Her poem “epitaph” which conveniently served as her epitaph on her tomb may serve as the ultimate final word of her poetry and goals:
“So I may say, “I died of living, having lived one hour”;
So they may say, “she died soliciting illicit fervour,” So you may say, “Greek flower; Greek ecstasy reclaims for ever one who died following intricate song’s lost measure.”
She was one who dedicated herself to poetry itself, almost like a kind of religion. Based on this selection, I am definitely interested in checking out the complete collection of her work.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 14, 2019
Some strong individual poems (the one beginning with "Not honey" I read my junior year of college and that stayed with me), but as a whole the collection lacks a dynamic voice or variety. Too many overreach for archaic themes. I'm not opposed to Greek classics, but that was predominantly what these poems consisted of, and imagining a New England poet relying on strength and love from gods like Zeus and the Greek isles felt too jarring in their emphasis. I'm not giving up on HD, but perhaps a different collection.
December 22, 2019
A beautiful, broad, and varied selection of the amazing H.D.’s poems!! My personal favorite is Epitaph:
So I may say,
“I died of living,
having lived one hour”;
so they may say
“she died soliciting
illicit fervour”;
so you may say
“Greek flower; Greek ecstasy
reclaims forever
one who died
following
intricate songs’ lost measure.”
So I may say,
“I died of living,
having lived one hour”;
so they may say
“she died soliciting
illicit fervour”;
so you may say
“Greek flower; Greek ecstasy
reclaims forever
one who died
following
intricate songs’ lost measure.”
August 2, 2020
how do I know
what pledge you gave your God,
how do you know
who is my Lord
and Lover?
XIX
“I love you,”
spoken in rhapsodic metre,
leaves me cold:
I have a horror
of finality,
I would rather guess,
wonder whether
either of us
could for a moment
endure the other,
after the first fine flavour
of irony
had worn off.
what pledge you gave your God,
how do you know
who is my Lord
and Lover?
XIX
“I love you,”
spoken in rhapsodic metre,
leaves me cold:
I have a horror
of finality,
I would rather guess,
wonder whether
either of us
could for a moment
endure the other,
after the first fine flavour
of irony
had worn off.
June 14, 2022
There were some poems in here I quite liked, but too often I felt like I was forcing myself to read and getting very little out of it. I maybe could’ve appreciated this more if I took a little more time on each poem (I also think footnotes or annotations would’ve helped me immensely).
Read
December 27, 2020Picked it up at work and read a couple of really beautiful poems in it. Saving here to come back to one day.
September 17, 2022
very good writer but can get a bit cloying after a while.
September 26, 2023
I needed to re-read mythology to understand most of the poems references. Ones about the sea more meaningful.
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