Amy Lowell: Selected Poems:

by Amy Lowell, Honor Moore (Editor)

A cigar-smoking proponent of free-verse modernism in open rebellion against her distinguished Boston lineage, Amy Lowell cut an indelible public figure in her lifetime. But in the words of editor Honor Moore, what strikes the contemporary reader is not the sophistication of Lowell's feminist or antiwar stances, but the bald audacity of her eroticism. Her search for an imagist poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite, found its purest expression in sensual love poems that bristle with lyric intensity. This new selection explores Lowell's full formal range, including cadenced verse, polyphonic prose, narrative poetry, and adaptations from the Chinese, and gives a fresh sense of the passion and energy of her work.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, LGBT, Feminism, The United States Of America, Womens

156 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 1927

About the author

A 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.

Reviews

[Valentina Vapaux · Rating 4 out of 5]

lowell was and is an underrated imagist poet from the early 20th century. her lesbian love poem where she compares her female lover to boticellis venus, venus in transiens, is my all time favorite.

[Richard S · Rating 3 out of 5]

After enjoying her “Lilacs” poem so much I was kind of excited to get more of Amy Lowell’s work but it turned out to be kind of boring. She was a rich patron of poets who dabbled a bit but was never really part of the art scene and it showed. Drab and even matronly at times, never edgy, or new, or risky. Some nice turns of phrase and some quality moments but I found myself cringing at her wording far too often. Of course after reading Mina Loy and Anna Kavan she was bound to fall short. Maybe I will try again later.

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read Lowell, of course, but I've never read a full book of Lowell's poetry before, so I wasn't prepared for the sheer number of poems that are: (a) all about colors, (b) all about flowers, (c) all about the Beloved, (d) some combination of a, b, and/or c.

I’m no Lowell scholar, but this felt like a comprehensive collection, with selections from all of her books, including quite a few translations from Fir-Flowers, as well as a selection of posthumous poems. She was only 51 when she died. Her last poems were showing a cutting wit and fearlessness, it’s a shame she did not live longer.

Everyone knows “Patterns” and “Lilacs” so no need to talk about them - here are two others:

Bright Sunlight
The wind has blown a corner of your shawl
Into the fountain,
Where it floats and drifts
Among the lily-pads
Like a tissue of sapphires.
But you do not heed it,
Your fingers pick at the lichens
On the stone edge of the basin,
And your eyes follow the tall clouds
As they sail over the ilex-trees.


The Garden By Moonlight
A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,
It is dazed with moonlight,
Contented with perfume,
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.
Firefly lights open and vanish
High as the tip buds of the golden glow
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,
Moon-spikes shafting through the snowball bush.
Only the little faces of the ladies' delight are alert and staring,
Only the cat, padding between the roses,
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.
Then you come,
And you are quiet like the garden,
And white like the alyssum flowers,
And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies.
Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies?
They knew my mother,
But who belonging to me will they know
When I am gone.

And here is one of the posthumous poems:

To a Lady of Undeniable Beauty and Practiced Charm

No peacock strutting on a balustrade
Could air his feathers with a cooler grace,
Assume a finer insolence of pace,
Or make his sole advance a cavalcade
Of sudden shifts of color, slants of shade,
Than you, the cold indifference of your face
Sharpening the cunning lure of velvets, lace,
Greens, blues, and golds, seduction on parade.
You take the accolade of staring eyes
As something due your elegance of pose,
Feeding your vanity on pecks of dust,
The weary iteration which supplies
No zest. I see you as a cankered rose
Its silver petals curled and cracked with rust.

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not quite sure how, after an English literature education in America, I still found myself wholly ignorant of Amy Lowell's poems until a chance mention in a historical fiction book prompted me to look her up.

I still don't know much about Lowell, but I hazard to say she was not an expert on aesthetic. However, the overall beauty of her poems far outweighs the occasional clumsy language, as far as I am concerned. In fact, the shades of emotion she conveys with such simple language probably belie complexities I as a first-time reader failed to see.

On a more personal level, these poems moved me and inspired me to reconnect with the outside world and to observe with more care and attention the ones that I love. The inclusion of many specific references to the New England landscape and to the private lives of women in particular resonated deeply with me, but I think Lowell has enough true understanding of the privileges and challenges of human life that most anyone will find aspects they can relate to.

Also, Lowell's own life is worth reading up on all on its own. Seriously, Google her.

This volume itself is a very beautiful, simple, but academically rigorous collection; I found it a great place to get to know Amy.

tl;dr if you want to feel all the feels and also luxuriate in beauty, read Lowell's poetry.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was quite obvious to me that Amy Lowell certainly had depth and a vibrant flare to her queerness. "New York at Night" is possibly my favourite from her collection of wonderful poems.

She beautifully integrates personification in her writing, bringing New York to life yet not with excitement and energy like one would expect instead she delicately makes us feel pity for the bustling city and it's never ending anguish filled days. Delicately implying that the city was cramped with ugly dirty houses with a polluted sky dangling over it hints that she was a master of words as well as rhyme.

A near horizon whose sharp jags
Cut brutally into a sky
Of leaden heaviness, and crags
Of houses lift their masonry
Ugly and foul, and chimneys lie
And snort, outlined against the gray
Of lowhung cloud. I hear the sigh
The goaded city gives, not day
Nor night can ease her heart, her anguished labours stay.

Unlike others who would see the spectacle and opportunity the grand metropolis would offer, she saw the truth. The monotonous streets that ran from north to south and east to west all identical and boring. The glowing clock tower that overbearingly symbolized "time is money". She pieced together that that clock - which people would obliviously pass underneath was a symbol of the city's crude religion- greed. Something that millions of people followed unaware that material things are not a measurement of true happiness.

Above, one tower tops the rest
And holds aloft man's constant quest:
Time! Joyless emblem of the greed
Of millions, robber of the best
Which earth can give, the vulgar creed
Has seared upon the night its flaming ruthless screed.

"New York at Night" also managed to provide an alluring description of the night sky. Through her eyes the night with its radiant stars would always readily offer her a dark cape that would cocoon her from seeing the scars they bore from living in the bustling city. They were poor by ,but wealthy at night. She had never shared the intimacy and connection with the urban jungle like she did with nature.

O Night! Whose soothing presence brings
The quiet shining of the stars.
O Night! Whose cloak of darkness clings
So intimately close that scars
Are hid from our own eyes. Beggars
By day, our wealth is having night
To burn our souls before altars
Dim and tree-shadowed, where the light
Is shed from a young moon, mysteriously bright.

For this and more reviews visit: Andy's Scribbles

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This selection includes poems from the seven collections published in Lowell's lifetime, including A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass , Sword Blades and Poppy Seed , Men, Women and Ghosts , Pictures Of The Floating World , Legends , Fir Flower Tablets , and What's O'Clock ; along with a number of poems published posthumously...

From A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912)...

High up in the apple tree climbing I go,
With the sky above me, the earth below.
Each branch is the step of a wonderful stair
Which leads to the town I see shining up there.

Climbing, climbing, higher and higher,
The branches blow and I see a spire,
The gleam of a turret, the glint of a dome,
All sparkling and bright, like white sea foam.

On and on, from bough to bough,
The leaves are thick, but I push my way through;
Before, I have always had to stop,
But to-day I am sure I shall reach the top.

Today to the end of the marvelous stair,
Where those glittering pinacles flash in the air!
Climbing, climbing, higher I go,
With the sky close above me, the earth far below.

- Climbing, pg. 8

From Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914)...

You glow in my heart
Like the flames of uncounted candles.
But when I go to warm my hands,
My clumsiness overturns the light,
And then I stumble
Against the tables and chairs.

- The Bungler, pg. 18

From Men, Women and Ghosts (1916)...

"So..." they said,
With their wine-glasses delicately poised,
Mocking at the thing they cannot understand.
"So..." they said again,
Amused and insolent.
The silver on the table glittered,
And the red wine in the glasses
Seemed the blood I had wasted
In a foolish cause.

- The Dinner Party: Fish, pg. 31

From Pictures Of The Floating World (1919)...

I
I wandered through a house of many rooms.
It grew darker and darker,
Until, at last, I could only find my way
By passing my fingers along the wall.
Suddenly my hand shot through an open window,
And the thorn of a rose I could not see
Pricked it so sharply
That I cried aloud.

II
I dug a grave under an oak-tree.
With infinite care, I stamped my spade
Into the heavy grass.
The sod sucked it,
And I drew it out with effort,
Watching the steel run liquid in the moonlight
As it came clear.
I stooped, and dug, and never turned,
For behind me,
On the dried leaves,
My own face lay like a white pebble,
Waiting.

III
I gambled with a silver money.
The dried seed-vessels of “honesty”
Were stacked in front of me.
Dry, white years slipping through my fingers
One by one.
One by one, gathered by the Croupier.
“Faites vos jeux, Messieurs.”
I staked on the red,
And the black won.
Dry years,
Dead years;
But I had a system,
I always staked on the red.

IV
I painted the leaves of bushes red
And shouted: “Fire! Fire!”
But the neighbors only laughed.
“We cannot warm our hands at them,” they said.
Then they cut down my bushes,
And made a bonfire,
And danced about it.
But I covered my face and wept,
For ashes are not beautiful
Even in the dawn.

V
I followed a procession of singing girls
Who danced to the glitter of tambourines.
Where the street turned at a lighted corner,
I caught the purple dress of one of the dancers,
But, as I grasped it, it tore,
And the purple dye ran from it
Like blood
Upon the ground.

VI
I wished to post a letter,
But although I paid much,
Still the letter was overweight.
“What is in this package?” said the clerk,
“It is very heavy.”
“Yes,” I said,
“And yet it is only a dried fruit.”

VII
I had made a kite,
On it I had pasted golden stars
And white torches,
And the tail was spotted scarlet like a tiger-lily,
And very long.
I flew my kite,
And my soul was contented
Watching it flash against the concave of the sky.
My friends pointed at the clouds;
They begged me to take in my kite.
But I was happy
Seeing the mirror shock of it
Against the black clouds.
Then the lightning came
And struck the kite.
It puffed—blazed—fell.
But still I walked on,
In the drowning rain,
Slowly winding up the string.

- Dreams in War Time, pg. 79-81

From Fir Flower Tablets (1921)...

In the clear green water - the shimmering moon.
In the moonlight - white herons flying.
A young man hears a girl plucking water-chestnuts;
They paddle home together through the night, singing.

- Autumn River Song, by Li T'ai-po, pg. 91

From What's O'Clock (1925)...

I want no horns to rouse me up to-night,
And trumpets make too clamorous a ring
To fit my mood, it is so weary white
I have no wish for doing any thing.

A music coaxed from humming strings would please;
Not plucked, but drawn in creeping cadences
Across a sunset wall where some Marquise
Picks a pale rose amid strange silences.

Ghostly and vaporous her gown sweeps by
The twilight dusking wall, I hear her feet
Delaying on the gravel, and a sigh,
Briefly permitted, touches the air like sleet.

And it is dark, I hear her feet no more.
A red moon leers beyond the lily-tank.
A drunken moon ogling a sycamore,
Running long fingers down its shining flank.

A lurching moon, as nimble as a clown,
Cuddling the flowers and trees which burn like glass
Red, kissing lips, I feel you on my gown -
Kiss me, red lips, and then pass - pass.

Music, you are pitiless to-night.
And I so old, so cold, so languorously white.

- Nuit Blanche, pg. 112-113

From Posthumously Published Poems...

Opaque because of the run mercury at its back,
White with a breath of yellow, like tarnished silver,
The old mirror hangs over the chimney-piece
Incased in its carved frame, and reflects the room beneath.
It is warped and bulging, because of the great fires
Of other years; and dim with the sun shining in it every Spring.
Old men and children move before it, and it reflects them all,
Pulling them this way and that in its uneven surface.
The pictures pass over it like mist over a morning window,
And it hangs in its carved frame, tarnished and beautiful,
And reflects everything.

- The Mirror, pg. 132

[Deborah Pickstone · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my most favourite poets - and interesting people! Read many times. The following is an oft-taught poem but also one I like. The second is a personal favourite.

Patterns - Poem by Amy Lowell

I walk down the garden-paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden-paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the
buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover.
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he
clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon--
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the
Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?


In a Garden

Gushing from the mouths of stone men
To spread at ease under the sky
In granite-lipped basins,
Where iris dabble their feet
And rustle to a passing wind,
The water fills the garden with its rushing,
In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns.

Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone,
Where trickle and plash the fountains,
Marble fountains, yellowed with much water.

Splashing down moss-tarnished steps
It falls, the water;
And the air is throbbing with it.
With its gurgling and running.
With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur.

And I wished for night and you.
I wanted to see you in the swimming-pool,
White and shining in the silver-flecked water.
While the moon rode over the garden,
High in the arch of night,
And the scent of the lilacs was heavy with stillness.

Night, and the water, and you in your whiteness, bathing!

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

DIscovering her was lifechanging. SHe knows how to craft a poem. Quite incredible. While she's not the most clever and not the most revolutionary, she knows how to use rhyme and rhythm well, and how to make you feel things. Serious things. She was a total badass. Love the intro and front notes on this one as well. Very informative and well written and passionate.

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the most beautiful love poetry I have ever read is by Amy Lowell. This particular volume is also excellent because of the Introduction by Moore. I didn't realize what an unconventional figure Lowell was during her life. Learning this has increased my admiration for her even more.

[Rosa Ramôa · Rating 5 out of 5]

"No céu há uma lua e estrelas,
E no meu jardim há mariposas amarelas
Agitando-se em torno do arbusto de azáleas brancas".

[behsforensics]

Cutting is for The Day that was That Day!
By Amy Lowell

[Lulu Joanis · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Some day there will be no war.
Then I shall take out this afternoon
and turn it in my fingers, and remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
and note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.

To-day, I can only gather it
and put it into my lunch-box,
for I have time for nothing
but the endeavour to balance myself
upon a broken world."



"Aubade"
"The Taxi"
"The Captured Goddess"
"Venus Transiens"
"Madonna of the Evening Flowers"
"September, 1918"
"St. Louis, June"

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although it did not seem as accessible to me as Ammons’ work, nor as insistently relevant, I was equally impressed with the range of Amy Lowell’s poetry. From her sonnets, rhymed stanzas and blank verse, her adapted Asian forms and translations from the Chinese, what she calls her “cadenced verse” (which I would label cadenced prose, reserving the term “verse” to mean syllabically metered poetry), to her polyphonic prose, she demonstrates virtuosic ability in all registers.

Some of my favorite traditional poems of Lowell’s were “On Capraccio’s Picture: The Dream Of St. Ursula” which reminds me of Wallace Stevens’ “Not the Idea of the Thing, but the Thing Itself,” her fifteen-line poem “In Answer To A Request” (to write a sonnet), “To A Lady Of Undeniable Beauty And Practised Charm” (because of its cleverness, including a rhyme scheme of aaaaaaaabcdbcd), and the longer poem “On Looking At A Copy Of Alice Meynell’s Poems, Given Me, Years Ago, By A Friend.”

“On Looking” is a lament of unreturned love, remembered with the finding of a book of poems given to the narrator in lieu of what she really wanted, but accepted as a way of being in the presence of the object of her love. The muscular quatrains foreshadow the stability and wisdom earned by years of separation and objectivity from both the love and the book of poems. And yet the poem is a brief indulgence into a former way of feeling and thinking that informs her present, and her future, after learning of the death of the poet (and the love?). Notice the work that each word and each line does to amplify the meaning into multiple realms:

I read of her death yesterday,
Frail lady whom I never knew
And knew so well. Would I could strew
Her grave with pansies, blue and grey.

Would I could stand a little space
Under a blowing, brightening sky,
And watch the sad leaves fall and lie
Gently upon that lonely place.

So cried her heart, a feverish thing.
But clay is still, and clay is cold,
And I was young, and I am old,
And in December what birds sing!

Go, wistful book, go back again
Upon your shelf and gather dust.
I’ve seen the glitter through the rust
Of old, long years, I’ve known the pain.

I’ve recollected both of you,
But I shall recollect no more.
Between us I must shut the door.
The living have so much to do.

It is this turn in the last line that endears Lowell to me, a technique that she uses quite successfully in many of her poems, reminding me of the way Mary Oliver ends many of her poems.

Other poems I was drawn to for their ordinary diction and pictures of daily life were “In A Garden,” “The Blue Scarf,” “A Rainy Night” and “Patterns.” In “Patterns” there is another turn in the second half of the poem as we learn in one line that the pattern Lowell is writing about most is the pattern of war with the knowledge that the man she is going to marry has been killed. The ultimate line of the poem asks the unanswerable question: “What are patterns for?”

[Highjump · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked that it was organized by style because I'm drawn to certain styles that I read closely and was able to skim other sections.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Pierre · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim volume of selected poems is one of the 31 volumes (to date) in the American Poets Project series published by the Library of America. I just love this series because each little volume seems designed to feed one's hunger for poetry in healthy proportions that nourish the mind and energize the spirit. Amy Lowell's poems do just that.

As the introduction states, this volume contains "examples of every kind of poem she wrote" (xxxii), including lyrics, free verse, anti-war poems, narrative poems, translations of Chinese poems, prose poems, etc. What I like most about Lowell's poetry is her precise word choice, which creates sharp, forceful, unique images (she was at one time a member and advocate of the Imagist movement). I can't help but admire her skilled use of language, even when her choice of subjects isn't always of particular interest to me. In sum, reading this collection of poems was a pleasant, gainful way for me to spend the afternoon.

Here are a couple favorites:

Anticipation
I have been temperate always,
But I am like to be very drunk
With your coming.
There have been times
I feared to walk down the street
Lest I should reel with the wine of you,
And jerk against my neighbors
As they go by.
I am parched now, and my tongue is horrible in my mouth,
But my brain is noisy
With the clash and gurgle of filling wine-cups.

The Taxi
When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum.
I call out for you against the jutted stars
And shout into the ridges of the wind.
Streets coming fast,
One after the other,
Wedge you away from me,
And the lamps of the city prick my eyes
So that I can no longer see your face.
Why should I leave you,
To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?

[Billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

After Ezra Pound's famous dismissal of Lowell's poetry as "Amygism" in jealous response to her influential contribution to Imagism, the publishing industry and Western canon unfortunately followed suit, making her poetry largely unavailable for nearly a century. This collection revives interest in a poet who, though she may now seem overly formal, was wildly popular in her own time. Here we find individual poems using nature imagery that has since become cliche but whose cumulative effect is unique and nuanced. The patterns that emerge throughout this collection make clear Lowell's questions regarding the constructedness of gender roles and the connection between lesbian passion and individual agency. An important read for students of the American Twentieth Century.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a Storm

You walk under the ice trees.
They sway, and crackle,
And arch themselves splendidly
To deck your going.
The white sun flips them into colour
Before you.
They are blue,
And mauve,
And emerald.
They are amber,
And jade,
And sardonyx.
They are silver fretted to flame
And startled to stillness,
Bunched, splintered, iridescent.
You walk under the ice trees
And the bright snow creaks as you step upon it.
My dogs leap about you,
And their barking strikes upon the air
Like sharp hammer-strokes on metal.
You walk under the ice trees
But you are more dazzling than the ice flowers,
And the dogs' barking
Is not so loud to me as your quietness.

You walk under the ice trees
At ten o'clock in the morning.

[Rosa Ramôa · Rating 4 out of 5]

CRUZAMENTO

Ó Tu,
Que vieste ter comigo um dia
deitada debaixo de macieiras, logo após o banho,
porque não estrangulaste antes de falar
em vez de encher-me do puro mel selvagem das tuas palavras,
para depois me deixar à mercê
das abelhas da floresta?



O TÁXI

Quando me afasto de ti
o mundo bate sem força
como um tambor que enfraquece.
Eu chamo-te entre as estrelas lá no alto
e grito pelas cristas do vento.
As ruas, rapidamente,
uma a seguir à outra,
levam-me para longe de ti,
e os candeeiros da cidade furam-me os olhos
para que não mais contemple a tua face.
Porque deverei eu abandonar-te,
para acabar magoada nas afiadas esquinas da noite?

[Lycidas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book offers a nice selection of Lowell's work, and is especially generous with "Pictures of the Floating World," though it doesn't touch her book-length poems. Lowell can be irritatingly aristocratic in some of her mannerisms, and at times I find her saying too much and taking too long to say it. Generally, her work improves throughout this selection and is marked by a passion that, when balanced with restraint, is quite moving.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lowell's early poems left me unmoved and fatigued, so the first quarter or so of this collection took me forever to plough through. I'm so glad I persevered, however. The poet grew tremendously and rapidly beginning with her 2nd volume. *Pictures from the Floating World* and her translations of Li Po are exquisite, my very favorites of her body of work. Therefore, this 3-star rating represents an average of Lowell at her weakest and her very best.

[Dolly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers a kaleidoscope of poems by this scion of the Lowell family from Massachusetts. A native of Massachusetts myself, having grown up mere miles from the eponymous town, I was drawn to this book.

I learned a great deal more about the author and her family from the introduction and biographical notes. It was an enlightening read.

[Steven Severance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly good poetry until the very end of the book. The posthumously published should have stayed Unpublished.

Lots of exploration, and variety, and love of language and love of Color.

[Melissa]

I see this book has high ratings, so thought I should give it a try.

[Lisa Greer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is there a more perfect poem than "Patterns?"

[David]

i was going through a phase

[Fed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lowett has a very unique way to write narrative with poetry. This hybrid style of writing is very enjoyable.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't have the in depth background to give an analysis of why this is so great, but, just as a layperson I can tell you this is beautiful, moving poetry that shouts its emotions off the page.

[E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not prepared for how much I enjoyed Amy Lowell's poetry, her imagery, her eroticism. What wonderful, powerful writing.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved a few of her poems and images, but a lot of them came across as disconnected imagery for me...