Back Selected Poems

Amy Lowell: Selected Poems

Edited by Honor Moore

“ I know no writer of English whose command of the rich vocabulary of sensuous impressions approaches Amy Lowell’s. The almost physical impact of it startles one each time one turns her pages.”—John Livingston Lowes, Saturday Review of Literature

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

Story of the Week Amy Lowell, “Spring Day”
May 26, 2016

A cigar-smoking proponent of free-verse modernism in open rebellion against her distinguished Boston lineage, Amy Lowell cut an indelible public figure. But in the words of editor Honor Moore, “what strikes the modern reader is not the sophistication of Lowell’s feminist or anti-war stances, but the bald audacity of her eroticism.”

Lowell was at the center of a group of pioneering modernists who, in an era convulsed by change, rejected musty Victorian standards and wrote poems of bracing immediacy. This new selection captures her full formal range: the “cadenced verse” of her Imagist masterpieces, her experiments in “polyphonic prose,” her narrative poetry, and her adaptations from the classical Chinese. It gives a fresh sense of the passion and energy of her work.

Honor Moore is the author of the poetry collections Darling, Red Shoes, and Memoi, and she edited Poems from the Women’s Movement for the American Poets Project. She is the author most recently of the critically acclaimed memoir The Bishop’s Daughter: A Memoir.

About the American Poets Project
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.
Table of Contents

Introduction by Honor Moore

from A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912)
Apples of Hesperides
ΔIΨA
On Carpaccio’s Picture The Dream of St. Ursula
The Matrix
A Fixed Idea
Crépescule du matin
The Starling
The Painted Ceiling
Climbing

from Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914)
The Captured Goddess
A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.
Astigmatism
Apology
A Petition
Absence
A Gift
The Bungler
Anticipation
The Taxi
The Giver of Stars
The Pike
The Blue Scarf
Aubade

from Men, Women and Ghosts (1916)
Patterns
Spring Day
The Dinner-Party
Towns in Colour

from Pictures of the Floating World (1919)
Streets
Desolation
The Fisherman’s Wife
The Pond
Autumn
The Camellia Tree of Matsue
Superstition
The Return
In Time of War
Time
Passing the Bamboo Fence
A Burnt Offering
Reflections
A Poet’s Wife
Spring Longing
Vernal Equinox
The Letter
Mise en Scène
Venus Transiens
Madonna of the Evening Flowers
Bright Sunlight
Wheat-in-the-Ear
The Weather-Cock Points South
The Artist
The Garden by Moonlight
Interlude
Bullion
A Shower
Summer Rain
After a Storm
Opal
Wakefulness
Orange of Midsummer
Shore Grass
Autumnal Equinox
Nerves
Autumn
Strain
Haunted
Grotesque
Maladie de l’Après-Midi
Nostalgia
A Decade
Penumbra
The Corner of Night and Morning
Beech, Pine, and Sunlight
A Bather
Dog-Days
The Travelling Bear
The Broken Fountain
Balls
Flotsam
Misericordia
Dreams in War Time
Spectacles
September. 1918

from Legends (1921)
Gavotte in D Minor

from Fir-Flower Tablets (1921)
Ch’ang Kan
Drinking Alone in the Moonlight
Descending the Extreme South Mountain; Passing the House of Hu Ssu, Lover of Hills; Spending the Night in the Preparation of Wine
Autumn River Song
Poem Sent on Hearing That Wang Ch’ang-ling Had Been Exiled to Lung Piao
The River Village
The Excursion
Sent to Li Po as a Gift
The Sorceress Gorge
Together We Know Happiness
from Songs of the Courtesans
from After How Many Years

from What’s O’Clock (1925)
Merely Statement
Vespers
White Currants
Afterglow
Lilacs
Meeting-House Hill
The Sisters
Nuit Blanche
Orientation
The Humming-birds
The Sand Altar
Time-Web
Katydids
Eleonora Duse

Posthumously Published Poems
The Doll
To a Lady of Undeniable Beauty and Practised Charm
Caustic
Carrefour
Granadilla
Threnody
After an Illness
The Mirror
New Heavens for Old
Anecdote
Still Life
Poetic Justice
To Francesca Braggiotti
Dissonance
A Rainy Night

7.50 List Price: $20.00 (Save: 63%) Free shipping on orders $50 and over

Or buy from our partners

Phone orders: 1-800-964-5778 Request product #600129

ISBN: 978-1-931082-70-9 189 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

Related Books

American Sonnets: An Anthology

Edith Wharton: Selected Poems

Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems

Muriel Rukeyser: Selected Poems

Library of America

CURATOR

A champion of America’s great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation’s history and culture.

Learn More

PUBLISHER

From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely recognized as America’s literary canon.

Browse our books Subscribe

NON-PROFIT

With contributions from donors, Library of America preserves and celebrates a vital part of our cultural heritage for generations to come.

Support our mission

Amy Lowell: Selected Poems

Related Books

Get 10% off your first Library of America purchase.