American imagist poet Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925) said of her works in vers libre (free verse) that its rhythms “have not been sufficiently plumbed, that there is in them a power of variation which has never yet been brought to the light of experiment.”
Expounding on her vers libre poetry, she wrote about this particular piece, “In ‘The Cremona Violin’ I have tried to give this flowing, changing rhythm to the parts in which the violin is being played.
The effect is farther heightened, because the rest of the poem is written in the seven line Chaucerian stanza.” This poem was originally part of Lowell’s collection titled Men, Women, and Ghosts (1916). Read More→
American poet Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925) was a master of imagist poetry. In an introduction to her “vers libre” poetry, she directs the reader of “A Roxbury Garden” to “find in the first two sections an attempt to give the circular movement of a hoop bowling along the ground, and the up and down, elliptical curve of a flying shuttlecock.”
This poem was originally part of a 1919 collection titled Men, Women, and Ghosts. Read More→
Prolific American poet Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925) was above all considered an Imagist, which in her definition was the “concentration is of the very essence of poetry” whose aim is to produce verses “that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.” Here are presented in her words, thoughts on her vers libre (free verse) poetry.
Lowell was kind of an evangelist of poetry, powered by her incredibly energy. She lectured tirelessly to promote poetry, and wrote ceaselessly — in addition to more than 650 poems, she wrote numerous essays, as well as works of criticism and translation. T.S. Eliot called her “the demon saleswoman of poetry.”
Here to shed more light on her work is the poet herself, from the Preface of Men, Women and Ghosts (1919): Read More→
Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was a prolific American poet. Though she wrote some 1,800 poems, only a few were published during her lifetime. She is still something of a mystery, which fuels the continued fascination with her work and life.
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant —” is one of her famous lines, and the truths revealed in her poetic works are as individual as the person who reads them.
Dickinson grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was born, lived, and died in the same house. While popular mythology has it that she rarely formed relationships with anyone outside her immediate family, this is not quite accurate. Read More→
Doris Lessing (1919 – 2013) was born in Persia, raised in Rhodesia and spent many years in London. Her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was published in 1950 and had a literary breakthrough with The Golden Notebook (1962), now considered a feminist classic.
When she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007 the jury described her as “that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.” In 2008 The Times put her at number five in the list of “The 50 Greatest British Writers since 1945.”
Doris Lessing long used her platform as an outspoken opponent of apartheid in South Africa, and spoke regularly about the subject. Her brilliance runs through all her work; here are some quotes from her various works to prove the point. Read More→
From the 1983 University of Nebraska edition of The Troll Garden by Willa Cather: Willa Cather’s first book of fiction, The Troll Garden (1905) is a collection of her earliest mature short stories. Well-crafted tales in their own right, they are important harbingers of her future novels and stories.
The precise language, profound psychological study, and finely honed plots that characterize her later work are prominent.
Some important themes are apparent here even more than in her later work: the conflict between East and West, art and the artistic temperament in America, the accommodations that the woman (or man) of sensibility must of does make with society and with idealism. The handling of these themes is as sophisticated and relevant today as ever. Read More→
Susan Bailey of Louisa May Alcott is My Passion introduces Literary Ladies readers to May Alcott Nieriker, the youngest sister of Louisa May Alcott (“Amy” in Little Women, the autobiographical but idealized version of the Alcott family’s life).
An immensely talented visual artist, May’s education was made possible by Louisa’s literary success.
While researching May and Ernest’s home in Meudon, France (see previous post), I had a chance to read May’s thoughts in her letters home from Caroline Ticknor’s book, May Alcott: A Memoir. Read More→
From the 2001 HarperCollins edition of Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-Tales from the Gulf States by Zora Neale Hurston. African-American folklore was Zora Neale Hurston’s first love.
Collected in the late 1920s, Every Tongue Got to Confess is the third volume of folk-tales from the celebrated author of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
These hilarious, bittersweet, often saucy folk-tales — some of which date back to the Civil War — provide a fascinating, verdant slice of African-American Life in the rural South at the turn of the twentieth century. Read More→
