:Amy Lowell

{{Infobox writer

| image = Houghton MS Lowell 62 (5) - Bachrach.jpg

| caption = Lowell at Sevenels, circa 1916

| birth_name = Amy Lawrence Lowell

| birth_date = {{birth date|1874|2|9|mf=y}}

| birth_place = Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|1925|5|12|1874|2|9|mf=y}}

| death_place = Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.

| occupation = Poet

| awards = Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1925)

| partner = Ada Dwyer Russell (1912–1925){{efn|Sources:{{cite book|last1=Munich|first1=Adrienne|last2=Bradshaw|first2=Melissa|title=Selected Poems of Amy Lowell|date=November 30, 2002|publisher=Rutgers University Press|location=New Brunswick, NJ|isbn=0813531284|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ICL6gd73WIgC&pg=PR40}}{{rp|xl, xlii}}{{citation |title=Improper Bostonians: Lesbian and Gay History from the Puritans to Playland |author=History Project (Boston, Mass.) |year=1998 |publisher=Beacon Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=azaIecghLVgC&pg=PA75|isbn=978-0-8070-7949-2 |page=75}}{{cite book|last1=Parker|first1=Sarah|title=The Lesbian Muse and Poetic Identity, 1889–1930|date=2015|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1848933866|page=157|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hYVECgAAQBAJ&pg=PT157}}}}

}}

Amy Lawrence Lowell (February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school. She posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.

Life

File:Houghton MS Lowell 62 (2) - Notman.jpg

Amy Lowell was born on February 9, 1874, in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Augustus Lowell and Katherine Bigelow Lowell. A member of the Brahmin Lowell family, her siblings included the astronomer Percival Lowell, the educator and legal scholar Abbott Lawrence Lowell, and Elizabeth Lowell Putnam, an early activist for prenatal care. They were the great-grandchildren of John Lowell and, on their mother's side, the grandchildren of Abbott Lawrence.{{cite book|author-link=Delmar R. Lowell|last=Lowell|first=Delmar R. |title=The Historic Genealogy of the Lowells of America from 1639 to 1899|location=Rutland, Vermont|publisher=Tuttle Publishing|date= 1899|page=283|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F4lSS27eATAC|via=Google Books}}{{cite book|title=Chosön, the Land of the Morning Calm; a Sketch of Korea|year=1888|publisher=Ticknor and Company|access-date=April 30, 2013|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zc0NAAAAIAAJ |via=Google Books}}

School was a source of considerable despair for the young Amy Lowell. She considered herself to be developing "masculine" and "ugly" features and she was a social outcast. She had a reputation among her classmates for being outspoken and opinionated.{{cite book|first=Horace |last=Gregory|title=Amy Lowell: Portrait of the Poet in her Own Time|publisher=Books for Libraries Press|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H_laAAAAMAAJ |via=Google Books |url-access=limited |location=Freeport, New York |date=1958}} At fifteen she wanted to be a photographer, poet, and coach racer.{{cite journal|title=Outselling the Modernisms of Men: Amy Lowell and the Art of Self-Commodification|journal=Victorian Poetry|volume=38|issue=1 |date=Spring 2000|page=142 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/36017/pdf|doi=10.1353/vp.2000.0002|publisher=West Virginia University Press |last1=Bradshaw |first1=Melissa }}

Lowell never attended college because her family did not consider it proper for a woman to do so. She compensated for this lack with avid reading and near-obsessive book collecting. She lived as a socialite and travelled widely, turning to poetry in 1902 (aged 28) after being inspired by a performance of Eleonora Duse in Europe. After beginning a career as a poet when she was well into her 30s, Lowell became an enthusiastic student and disciple of the art.{{Cite web|date=March 10, 2021|title=Amy Lowell|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/amy-lowell|access-date=March 10, 2021|website=Poetry Foundation}}

Lowell was a lesbian, and in 1912 she met the actress Ada Dwyer Russell, who would become her lover. Russell is the subject of many of Lowell's more erotic works, most notably the love poems contained in 'Two Speak Together', a subsection of Pictures of the Floating World.{{cite book|last1=Castle|first1=Terry|title=The Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology from Ariosto to Stonewall|date=13 December 2005|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=0231125119|page=649|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8dBWMz-FpZcC&pg=PA649}} The two women traveled to England together, where Lowell met Ezra Pound, who at once became a major influence and a major critic of her work. Pound considered Lowell's embrace of Imagism to be a kind of hijacking of the movement. Lowell has been linked romantically to writer Mercedes de Acosta, but the only evidence of any contact between them is a brief correspondence about a planned memorial for Duse.

Lowell was a short but imposing figure who kept her hair in a bun and wore a pince-nez.

File:TIME Magazine cover from March 2, 1925 featuring Amy Lowell.jpg cover from March 2, 1925, featuring Lowell]]

Lowell publicly smoked cigars, as newspapers of the day frequently mentioned.{{rp|p=96}} A glandular problem kept her perpetually overweight. Poet Witter Bynner once said, in a comment frequently misattributed to Ezra Pound, that she was a "hippopoetess".{{rp|p=171}} Her admirers defended her, however, even after her death. One rebuttal was written by Heywood Broun in his obituary tribute to Amy. He wrote, "She was upon the surface of things a Lowell, a New Englander and a spinster. But inside everything was molten like the core of the earth ... Given one more gram of emotion, Amy Lowell would have burst into flame and been consumed to cinders."{{Cite book |last=Agarwal |first=Suman |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JAmoX4di8doC |title=Sylvia Plath |date=2003 |publisher=Northern Book Centre |location=New Delhi, India |isbn=978-81-7211-149-6 |page=12|via=Google Books}}

File:Grave of Amy Lowell.jpg in Cambridge, Massachusetts]]

Lowell died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1925, at the age of 51 and is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery.{{cite book|last=Wilson|first=Scott |title=Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons|edition=3rd| page=2 |publisher=McFarland & Company |date=2016 |isbn=978-0-7864-7992-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WBOPxAEACAAJ|via=Google Books}} The following year, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for What's O'Clock. That collection included the patriotic poem "Lilacs", which Louis Untermeyer said was the poem of hers he liked best.

Her first published work appeared in 1910 in Atlantic Monthly. The first published collection of her poetry, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, appeared two years later, in 1912. An additional group of uncollected poems was added to the volume The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell, published in 1955 with an introduction by Untermeyer, who considered himself her friend.

Though she sometimes wrote sonnets, Lowell was an early adherent to the "free verse" method of poetry and one of the major champions of this method. She defined it in her preface to "Sword Blades and Poppy Seed" in the North American Review for January 1917; in the closing chapter of "Tendencies in Modern American Poetry"; and also in The Dial (January 17, 1918), as: "The definition of vers libre is: a verse-formal based upon cadence. To understand vers libre, one must abandon all desire to find in it the even rhythm of metrical feet. One must allow the lines to flow as they will when read aloud by an intelligent reader. Or, to put it another way, unrhymed cadence is "built upon 'organic rhythm,' or the rhythm of the speaking voice with its necessity for breathing, rather than upon a strict metrical system. Free verse within its own law of cadence has no absolute rules; it would not be 'free' if it had."{{cite book|last=Livingston Lowes |first=John| title=Conventions and Revolt in Poetry|date=1928|publisher=Houghton Mifflin|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=diQ6AAAAIAAJ |via=Google Books|page=257| author-link=John Livingston Lowes}}

Untermeyer writes that "She was not only a disturber but an awakener."{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N0AtxcoLkC8C&pg=PA77| page=77| title=Modern American poetry, 1865–1950 |author1=Alan Shucard |author2=Fred Moramarco |author3=William Sullivan | publisher=University of Massachusetts Press| year=1990| isbn=978-0-87023-720-1 |via=Google Books}} In many poems, Lowell dispenses with line breaks, so that the work looks like prose on the page. This technique she labeled "polyphonic prose".{{cite book| url=https://archive.org/details/americanprosepoe00delv| url-access=registration| title=The American Prose Poem | author=Michel Delville| page=6| publisher=University Press of Florida| year=1998| isbn=978-0-8130-1591-0 |via=Internet Archive}}

Throughout her working life, Lowell was a promoter of both contemporary and historical poets. Her book Fir-Flower Tablets was a poetical re-working of literal translations of the works of ancient Chinese poets, notably Li Tai-po (701–762). Her writing also included critical works on French literature. At the time of her death, she was attempting to complete her two-volume biography of John Keats (work on which had long been frustrated by the noncooperation of F. Holland Day, whose private collection of Keatsiana included Fanny Brawne's letters to Frances Keats). Lowell wrote of Keats: "the stigma of oddness is the price a myopic world always exacts of genius."{{cite book| url=https://archive.org/stream/johnkeatsvolumei009666mbp/johnkeatsvolumei009666mbp_djvu.txt| title=John Keats| author=Amy Lowell| volume=2| publisher=Houghton Mifflin | year=1925 | page=152|via=Internet Archive}}

Lowell published not only her own work, but also that of other writers. According to Untermeyer, she "captured" the Imagist movement from Ezra Pound. Pound threatened to sue her for bringing out her three-volume series Some Imagist Poets, and thereafter derisively called the American Imagists the "Amygist" movement. Pound criticized her as not an imagist, but merely a rich woman who was able to financially assist the publication of imagist poetry. She said that Imagism was weak before she took it up, whereas others said it became weak after Pound's "exile" towards Vorticism.

D.H. Lawrence dedicated his 1918 book New Poems "To Amy Lowell".url=https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/22726/pg22726-images.html

Lowell wrote at least two poems about libraries—The "Boston Athenaeum"{{cite book|last1=Lowell|first1=Amy|title=A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass|date=1912|publisher=Houghton Mifflin|location=Boston |page=115|url=https://archive.org/stream/adomemanycolour00lowegoog#page/n130/mode/2up/search/boston|via=Internet Archive}} and "The Congressional Library"{{cite web|last1=Lowell|first1=Amy|title=The Congressional Library|website=Library of Congress |url=https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0101/poem_praise.html}}—during her career. A discussion of libraries also appears in her essay "Poetry, Imagination, and Education".{{cite magazine|last1=Lowell|first1=Amy|title=Poetry, Education, and Imagination|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25121691 |jstor=25121691|magazine=The North American Review |date=November 1917 |volume=205|issue=744|page=773}}

Relationship with Ada Dwyer Russell

File:Ada_Dwyer_Russell,_1916.jpg was the subject of many of her romantic poems.]]

Lowell's partner Ada Dwyer Russell was the subject of many of Lowell's romantic poems,{{cite book|last1=Castle|first1=Terry|title=The Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology from Ariosto to Stonewall|year= 2005|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=0231125119|page=649|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8dBWMz-FpZcC&pg=PA649|via=Google Books}} and Lowell wanted to dedicate her books to Russell, but Russell would not allow that, and relented only once for Lowell's biography of John Keats, in which Lowell wrote, "To A.D.R., This, and all my books. A.L."{{cite book|last1=Bradshaw|first1=Melissa|last2=Munich|first2=Adrienne|title=Amy Lowell, American Modern|date=2004|publisher=Rutgers University Press|location=New Brunswick, New Jersey|isbn=0813533562|page=62|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u5AXdTOuGy4C|via=Google Books}}{{rp|p=62}} Examples of these love poems to Russell include the Taxi, Absence, A Lady {{cite book|last1=Rollyson|first1=Carl|title=Amy Lowell Anew: A Biography|year=2013|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|isbn=978-1442223929|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w2JpJMwo0okC&pg=PP1|via=Google Books}} Preface reprinted at the [http://www.carlrollyson.com/_i_amy_lowell_anew__a_biography__i__118603.htm author's website].{{rp|xxi}} In a Garden, Madonna of the Evening Flowers,{{cite journal|last1=Hamer|first1=Diane|title=The Love Songs of Amy Lowell|journal=The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide|page=48|date=December 30, 2013|volume=21|issue=1|url=http://www.glreview.org/article/the-love-songs-of-amy-lowell/}} Opal,{{cite web|last1=Faderman|first1=Lillian|title=About Amy Lowell's Poetry|url=http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/amylowell/about.htm|publisher=University of Illinois}} and Aubade.{{cite journal|last1=Karami|first1=Siham|title=In the Manner of Amy Lowell|journal=The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide|date=July–August 2016|volume=23|issue=4|page=39|url=http://www.glreview.org/wp-content/uploads/DigitalEditions/July-Aug%202016/files/assets/common/downloads/page0039.pdf}} Lowell admitted to John Livingston Lowes that Russell was the subject of her series of romantic poems titled "Two Speak Together".{{cite web|last1=Faderman|first1=Lillian|title=Amy Lowell (1874–1925)|url=http://faculty.georgetown.edu/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/lowella.html|publisher=Georgetown University}}{{cite journal|last1=Hamer|first1=Diane Ellen|title=Amy Lowell wasn't writing about flowers|journal=The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide|date=July 1, 2004|volume=11|issue=4|url=https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA119024529&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=15321118&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=oregon_oweb&aty=ip |via=Gale}} Lowell's poems about Russell have been called the most explicit and elegant lesbian love poetry during the time between the ancient Sappho and poets of the 1970s. Most of the private correspondence in the form of romantic letters between the two were destroyed by Russell at Lowell's request, leaving much unknown about the details of their life together.{{rp|47}}

Legacy

In the post-World War I years, Lowell was largely forgotten, but the women's movement in the 1970s and women's studies brought her back to light. According to Heywood Broun, however, Lowell showed little political interest in feminism. Within the realm of literature, though, she spoke highly of contemporary female poets such as Edna St. Vincent Millay.{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DKNJtTw8V5sC&pg=PA43| title=Artistic Outlaws | author=Sonja Samberger| pages=43–44| publisher=LIT Verlag | place=Berlin| year=2005| isbn=978-3-8258-8616-5 }} She also drew inspiration from her female predecessors in poetry; her poem "The Sisters" explores in depth her thoughts on Sappho, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Emily Dickinson.

Additional sources of interest in Lowell today come from the anti-war sentiment of the oft-taught poem "Patterns"; her personification of inanimate objects, as in "The Green Bowl", and "The Red Lacquer Music Stand"; and her lesbian themes, including the love poems addressed to Ada Dwyer Russell in "Two Speak Together."

Lowell's correspondence with her friend Florence Ayscough, a writer and translator of Chinese literature, was compiled and published by Ayscough's husband Professor Harley Farnsworth MacNair in 1945.{{Cite book|editor-last=Farnsworth MacNair|editor-first=Harley|editor-link=Harley Farnsworth MacNair|date=1946|title=Florence Ayscough and Amy Lowell: Correspondence of a Friendship|publisher=University of Chicago Press|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WvdaAAAAMAAJ |url-access=limited|via=Google Books}}

Works

{{cite magazine| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IGsAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA512| title=Fireworks| magazine=The Atlantic| date=April 1915| volume=115 |via=Google Books}}

=Books=

{{cite book| title=A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass| url=https://archive.org/details/adomemanycolour00lowegoog| quote=Amy Lowell.| year=1912| publisher=Houghton Mifflin}}
{{cite book| title=Sword Blades and Poppy Seed| url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_L6IqAAAAMAAJ| quote=Amy Lowell sword blades.| publisher= Macmillan| year=1914 }}
{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AKIqAAAAMAAJ| title=Men, Women and Ghosts| publisher=Macmillan| year=1916}}
{{cite book| title=Can Grande's Castle| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XmsqAAAAYAAJ&q=Amy+Lowell+grand%27s+castle&pg=PA172| publisher=Macmillan| year=1919| isbn=0-403-00658-9 }}
{{cite book| title=Pictures of the Floating World| url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_K5cCAAAAYAAJ| quote=Amy Lowell.| publisher=Macmillan| year=1919| isbn=0-404-17128-1 }}
{{cite book| title=Legends| url=https://archive.org/details/legends00massgoog| publisher=Houghton Mifflin| year=1921 }}
{{cite book| title=Fir-Flower Tablets| url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_KicRAAAAYAAJ| publisher=Houghton Mifflin| year=1921| isbn=0-88355-058-X}}
{{cite book| title=A Critical Fable| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cL1CEjPumCgC| publisher=Read Books| isbn=9781408601471| date=1922|last1 = Lowell|first1 = Amy}}
{{cite book| title=What's O'Clock| publisher=Houghton Mifflin| year=1925 }}
{{cite book| title=East Wind| url=https://archive.org/details/eastwind0000lowe| url-access=registration| quote=Amy Lowell.| publisher=Houghton Mifflin| year=1926 }}
{{cite book| title=Ballads for Sale| url=https://archive.org/details/balladsforsale0000lowe| url-access=registration| publisher=Houghton Mifflin| year=1927 }}
{{cite book|title=Selected Poems of Amy Lowell|editor1-first=Melissa|editor1-last=Bradshaw |editor2-first=Adrienne |editor2-last=Munich |location=New Brunswick, NJ |publisher=Rutgers University Press|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ICL6gd73WIgC |url-access=limited|via=Google Books |date=2002|isbn=978-0-8135-3128-1 }}
{{cite book| title=The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=55E2wwEACAAJ |via=Google Books| place=Boston, Massachusetts| publisher=Houghton Mifflin|date=1955}}
{{cite book| title=Amy Lowell: A Chronicle, With Extracts from her Correspondence| url=https://archive.org/details/amylowellchronic0000damo| url-access=registration| first=S. Foster |last=Damon| publisher=Houghton Mifflin| place=Boston| year=1935}}
{{cite book| title=The Touch of You Amy Lowell's Poems of Love and Beauty selected by Peter Seymour| publisher=Hallmark Cards| year=1972| isbn=0875292887| url-access=registration| url=https://archive.org/details/touchofyouamylow00hall|via=Internet Archive}}

=Criticism=

{{cite book| url=https://archive.org/stream/johnkeatsvolumei009666mbp/johnkeatsvolumei009666mbp_djvu.txt| title=John Keats | author=Amy Lowell | publisher=Houghton Mifflin | year=1925 }}

=Anthology=

{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GEoLAAAAYAAJ&q=Amy+Lowell+Some+Imagist+Poets| title=Some imagist poets | publisher=Houghton Mifflin| year=1917| volume=3| isbn=1-4191-4804-4}}

=Choral settings of poetry=

To a Friend, by [https://www.gisellewyers.com/ Giselle Wyers]. Santa Barbara Music Publishing, Inc.
Sea Shell, by [https://sbmp.com/ComposerPage.php?ComposerNum=276 Vicente Chavarria]. Santa Barbara Music Publishing, Inc.
This Perfect Beauty, by [https://jennibrandon.com/ Jenni Brandon]. Santa Barbara Music Publishing, Inc.
A Winter Ride, by [http://www.mistyldupuis.com/ Misty L. Dupuis]. Earth Cadence Publishing.
The Giver of Stars, by [https://jennibrandon.com/ Jenni Brandon]. Jenni Brandon Music.
A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, by [https://dominickdiorio.com/ Dominick DiOrio]. Hal Leonard.
A Sprig of Rosemary, by [https://www.ecspublishing.com/composers/v/jeffrey-van.html Jeffrey Van]. Hal Leonard.
Absence, by [https://dominickdiorio.com/ Dominick DiOrio]. G. Schirmer.
At Night, by [https://jennibrandon.com/ Jenni Brandon]. Jenni Brandon Music.
You Are the Music, by [http://www.victorjohnsonmusic.com/ Victor C. Johnson]. Chorister's Guild.
The Giver of Stars, by [https://www.joanszymko.com/ Joan Szymko]. Independent Music Publishers Cooperative.
You Are the Music, by [https://www.joanszymko.com/ Joan Szymko]. Independent Music Publishers Cooperative.

Notes

References

External links

{{Gutenberg author | id=147| name=Amy Lowell}}
{{Internet Archive author |sname=Amy Lowell |sopt=t}}
{{Librivox author |id=1345}}
[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=80647 Poems by Amy Lowell and biography] at Poetry Foundation
{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1916/03/26/archives/how-does-the-new-poetry-differ-from-the-old-amy-lowell-laments-the.html |title=How Does the New Poetry Differ from the Old?; Amy Lowell Laments the Lack of Authoritative Criticism in America – Says No One Should Make a Living by Writing|newspaper=The New York Times|date=March 26, 1916}}

{{s-ttl|title=Cover of Time magazine

|years=March 2, 1925}}

Category:1874 births

Category:1925 deaths

Category:American socialites

Category:Burials at Mount Auburn Cemetery

Category:Imagists

Category:American lesbian writers

Category:LGBTQ people from Massachusetts

Category:Modernist women writers

Category:Writers from Brookline, Massachusetts

Category:Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners