Amy Lowell was a vivacious and outspoken American poet known for her role in the Imagist movement along with her various works in the early 20th century. In Brookline, Massachusetts on February 9, 1874, Amy Lowell was born to a family at the top of the Boston society. She was inspired to follow an intellectual path from an early age, as her two older brothers, Abbot Lawrence and Percival, were renowned scholars. Amy Lowell spent her early years being tutored at home, and later she was sent to various private schools. Her family thought it improper for a girl to go to college therefore she did not attend. Although her education never ventured far from her home, her family’s temporary stays in Europe granted her worldliness and a cosmopolitan environment. When she was seventeen, she immersed herself in her seven thousand-book library at her family’s estate in Brookline. Lowell’s seclusion in her studies supports rumors that she was social outcast with a loud and opinionated character. She once stated, “God made me a business woman and I made myself a poet.” Her determination and confidence led her to stand out as a professional in a time when women’s abilities were overlooked.
One of the most significant influences
on Amy Lowell’s work was the Imagist movement. Lowell stated that this Anglo-American
movement, led by Ezra Pound, believed that, “concentration is the very essence
of poetry.” The members of this movement, in Lowell’s words, attempted to
“produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.” Lowell
used these principles in her work and increased its popularity. Her attraction
to Imagism led her to editing and contributing to an anthology of Imagist poets
in 1915. Polyphonic prose was another of Lowell’s influences. In this kind of
poetry, there is a mixture of formal verse and free forms. Formal verse poems
follow specific rules of poetry, such as rhyming patterns and stanza length,
while free verse is more relaxed. Lowell also became intrigued by Chinese and
Japanese poetry. She even collaborated with the translator, Florence Ayscough, in
1921 to create a collection in Chinese, Fir-Flower Tablets. Lowell was
unafraid of breaking boundaries, which enabled her to create a wide range of
poems. Her boldness contributed to her success.
Amy Lowell worked with her mother and
sister in 1887 to write and publish Dream Drops or Stories From Fairy Land
by a Dreamer. She made her first
published poem, Fixed Idea, in
1910, when she was thirty-six years old. Two years later, her first
collection, A Dome of Many Colored Glass, was published. In a fifteen-year
career, Lowell was able to published more than 650 poems. In 1925, she
published a lengthy biography of Keats, a poet whom she believed to be the
forbearer of Imagism. Much of her work includes influences of his writing
style. In the same year, Lowell won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection What’s
O’Clock. Lowell’s achievements can be attributed to her fearless and
charismatic attitude, which allowed her to explore the unknown world of poetry.
A Lady
By Amy Lowell
You are beautiful and faded
Like an old opera tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Of an eighteenth-century boudoir.
In your eyes
Smoulder the fallen roses of outlived minutes,
And the perfume of your soul
Is vague and suffusing,
With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.
Your half-tones delight me,
And I grow mad with gazing
At your blent colors.
My vigor is a new-minted penny,
Which I cast at your feet.
Gather it up from the dust,
That its sparkle may amuse you.
Info on Abbot LawrenceLinks:
Info on Percival Lowell
Ezra Pound Poems
What's O'Clock
Ezra Pound Poems
What's O'Clock
Works Cited
"Amy Lowell." The
Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/amy-lowell>.
"Amy Lowell." Poets.org.
Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2015. <http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/amy-lowell>.
"Amy Lowell." Wikipedia.
N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2015. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Lowell>.
"A Dome of Many-Coloured
Glass." Forgotten Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.
<http://www.forgottenbooks.com/books/
A_Dome_of_Many-Coloured_Glass_1000649523>.
"Figurative Language Poem 7." EReading Worksheets. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.ereadingworksheets.com/figurative-language-worksheets/figurative-language-poem-7-a-lady-by-amy-lowell-answers.html>.
"Free Vs. Formal Verse Poetry: A List of Types of
Poems." Writer's Relief.
Writer's Relief, n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.
<http://writersrelief.com/blog/2008/03/free-vs-formal-verse-poetry-a-list-of-types-of-poems/>.
"Later
Ezra Pound." Open Letters Monthly. WordPress, n.d. Web. 2 Apr.
2015.
<http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/
attainted-the-life-and-afterlife-of-ezra-pound-in-italy/>.
Biography and Poem Analysis
A Lady, by Amy Lowell, provides a description of an old woman in a vivid and precise manner that contains Lowell’s principles of Imagism. The identity of the narrator is not revealed, which allows the readers to create an image of the story the poem tells through their own eyes. Lowell assists the reader in doing this by incorporating her Imagist style. She makes a clear and exact depiction that affects the readers’ senses of sight, smell, and hearing. Her use of similes such as, “You are beautiful and faded/ Like an old opera tune,” (Lowell, Lines 1-2) helps immerse the reader in the world of the poem. Lowell also uses personification. “And the perfume of your soul/ Is vague and suffusing/ With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.” (Lowell, Lines 8-10) The soul adopts the trait of scent, which provides a further description of the old woman. The word “pungence” entails an unpleasant scent, while the word “vague” entails that it is unfamiliar to the narrator. Lowell once stated that her use of Imagism is creating, “poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.” This poem embodies her belief as it contains intricate and vibrant detail that makes the reader feel directly involved. The ending of the poem discusses the contrast between the old and the new. “My vigor is a new-minted penny/ Which I cast at your feet/ Gather it up from the dust/ That its sparkle may amuse you.” (Lowell, Lines 14-17) Lowell is comparing and contrasting the old and the new by using the penny as a symbol for youth. Lowell uses terms such as “vigor” to describe the young and energetic, while she uses terms such as “faded” to describe the old and venerable. Lowell shows that the two are the same in their shared beauty. When the old woman picks up the new penny, they are bonded by two different kinds of attraction. The beauty of the penny is its sparkle and freshness. The beauty of the woman is her age and intriguing physique. Lowell’s definition of beauty expands far beyond what her society might label it. In A Lady, Lowell provides examples of her Imagist beliefs as well as showing her appreciation for unconventional beauty.
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