The Poetry of Amy Lowell

The Poetry of Amy Lowell.

Poetry is a fascinating use of language. With almost a million words at its command it is not surprising that the English language has produced some of the most beautiful, moving and descriptive verse through the centuries. In this volume we look at the works of the American poet Amy Lowell. She was born into the prominent Lowell family in Brookline Massachusetts in 1874. Although her brother was to become President of Harvard she never entered college, her family considering it not proper for a woman. However she loved books and was an avid reader and collector. A socialite, she traveled widely and first began to publish in 1910. Thought to be a lesbian, the erotic themes within several of her poems are a wonderful loving tribute and exploration of her relationships. She published other poets and was working on a biography of the poet John Keats which brought forth the wonderful line “The stigma of oddness is the price a myopic world always exacts of genius.”

In becoming a major figure in the Imagist movement she clashed with Erza Pound frequently. In 1925 she died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of fifty-one. The following year, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for What’s O’Clock. This volume of her poems is read by Richard Mitchley and Ghizela Rowe