Amy Lowell

by Danielle Leonard

Amy Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, to one of the most powerful and wealthiest Boston families. The men of her family were "millionaires, manufacturers, philanthropists, statesmen, ambassadors, judges," and her brother Percival, an astronomer, discovered the planet Pluto (Baym 1143). The women of her family were expected to assume the busy roles of wife, mother, and socialite; however, none of this interested Lowell. She "maintained an individuality and single-mindedness" while also retaining her family’s proud heritage and reputation (Healey). She eschewed the typical education girls of her class received and only attended school from the ages ten to seventeen. Instead, she read extensively in her family’s private library, and was encouraged to write from an early age.

 A quote attributed to poet Amy Lowell "applies to both her determined personality and her sense of humor: ‘God made me a business woman…and I made myself a poet’" ("Amy," Contemporary). Lowell began writing professionally in 1912 at the age of thirty-eight, and her first book of poems—A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912)—was both a popular and critical success (Baym 1143). After reading H.D.’s poetry the following year, Lowell devoted herself to popularizing modern imagistic poetry. She traveled to England to meet the imagists H.D., Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, and others who "rather than describing something—an object or situation—and then generalizing about it…attempted to present the object directly," in simple, concrete terms (Baym 1282). Lowell herself claimed the imagists’ goal was to: use the language of common speech, create new rhythms, allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject, present an image, believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry, and produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite (Healey). Lowell’s own poetry was "never exclusively imagist," but used many forms of narrative and journalistic prose poems, as well as different verse patterns (Baym 1143). The introduction to Lowell in The Norton Anthology of American Literature (2003) accurately describes her poetry: "her best poems tend to enclose sharp imagistic representation with this relatively fluid line, thereby achieving an effect of simultaneous compactness and flexibility" (Baym 1144). Many of her poems are written in free verse, but Lowell used the term "unrhymed cadence." She was "convinced that this rhythm most successfully conveys the poems' exact meanings to English readers . . . based upon ‘organic rhythm,’ that is, the cadences of the natural voice including the need to breathe . . . ‘a fluid and changing form, now prose, now verse,’ reflecting and enhancing the meaning and emotion behind the words" (Healey). Lowell was also not afraid of experimenting.

All of this is illustrated in her poem "September, 1918," which contains remarkable images that flow into one another: "This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;/ The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;/ The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves" (lines 1-3). Lowell was also fond of using flowers and colors as symbols in her poems. For example, her poem "The Captured Goddess" contains a myriad of colors and flowers:

"Patterns," a poem often anthologized, is also rife with colors and plant life. Lowell draws the reader into the world of the narrator with the images of "all the daffodils . . . blowing" along with "the bright blue squills," bidding them to smell the aromas of summer in the garden and hear the water splashing in the fountain (lines 2-3).

Lowell did not restrict her writing to poetry. In the early 1920s she began researching and writing an ambitious 1300-page biography on John Keats, attempting "to show why she felt the English writer, who died in 1821, was the spiritual forebear of imagist poetry" ("Amy," Contemporary). In addition to editing several imagist anthologies, Lowell wrote two books of literary criticism: Six French Poets: Studies in Contemporary Literature (1915) and Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (1917). A generous and forthright woman, Lowell used her finances and social connections "to boost the careers of other poets, providing feedback, recommending their work to others, acting as a liaison with editors," most notably Carl Sandburg ("Amy," Contemporary).

Though her health was plagued by hernia problems since 1916, Lowell was not a woman likely to follow the doctor’s orders. Following a severe hernia attack on May 12, 1925, Lowell ignored her doctors' orders and got out of bed, though she could hardly walk. "Sitting before her mirror, she first noticed a numbness in her left hand, then watched as the right side of her face fell"—she knew she was having a stroke (Healey). She called for a doctor, lost consciousness, and died a few hours later. Up until the moment of her death, Lowell was "an ardent, tireless, and dedicated impresario of modern poetry" and an example for new modern women (Healy).