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Amy Lowell [1874-1925] USA
Ranked #120 in the top 380 poets
Votes 69%: 257 up, 113 down

Free verse, sonnets.

In many poems, Lowell dispenses with line breaks, so that the work looks like prose on the page. This technique she labeled "polyphonic prose".

"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."

Born in Massachusetts, Amy Lowell  was deeply interested in and influenced by the Imagist movement and she received the Pulitzer Prize for her collection  What’s A Clock . 

	Amy Lowell was born in 1874 at Sevenels, a ten-acre family estate in Brookline, Massachusetts. Her family was Episcopalian, of old New England stock, and at the top of Boston society. Lowell was the youngest of five children. Her elder brother Abbott Lawrence, a freshman at Harvard at the time of her birth, went on to become president of Harvard College. As a young girl she was first tutored at home, then attended private schools in Boston, during which time she made several trips to Europe with her family. At seventeen she secluded herself in the 7,000-book library at Sevenals to study literature. Lowell was encouraged to write from an early age. In 1887 she, with her mother and sister, wrote Dream Drops or Stories From Fairy Land by a Dreamer, printed privately by the Boston firm Cupples and Hurd. Her poem "Fixed Idea" was published in 1910 by the Atlantic Monthly, after which Lowell published individual poems in various journals. In October of 1912 Houghton Mifflin published her first collection, A Dome of Many Colored Glass.

	 

	The primary Imagists were Pound, Ford Madox Ford, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), and Richard Aldington. This Anglo-American movement believed, in Lowell`s words, that "concentration is of the very essence of poetry" and strove to "produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite." Lowell campaigned for the success of Imagist poetry in America and embraced its principles in her own work. She acted as a publicity agent for the movement, editing and contributing to an anthology of Imagist poets in 1915. Her enthusiastic involvement and influence contributed to Pound`s separation from the movement. As Lowell continued to explore the Imagist style she pioneered the use of "polyphonic prose" in English, mixing formal verse and free forms. Later she was drawn to and influenced by Chinese and Japanese poetry. This interest led her to collaborate with translator Florence Ayscough on Fir-Flower Tablets in 1921. Lowell had a lifelong love for the poet Keats, whose letters she collected and influences can be seen in her poems. She believed him to be the forbearer of Imagism. Her biography of Keats was published in 1925, the same year she won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection What`s A Clock.

	A dedicated poet, publicity agent, collector, critic, and lecturer, Lowell died in 1925 at Sevenals.

	 

Fantasy, Free verse, Imagism, Modernism

YearsCountryPoetInteraction
701-762
CHN
Li Bai
→ influenced Amy Lowell
1917-1977
USA
Robert Lowell
→ relative Amy Lowell
1795-1821
ENG
John Keats
← biography by Amy Lowell
1878-1967
USA
Carl Sandburg
← praised by Amy Lowell
1894-1962
USA
E.e. cummings
← influenced by Amy Lowell


WorkLangRating
Patterns
eng
23
Vernal Equinox
eng
11
Bath
eng
7
Opal
eng
5
Flute-Priest
eng
4
Hoar-Frost
eng
4
Falling Snow
eng
3
From One Who Stays
eng
3
Aubade
eng
2
Interlude
eng
2
New York At Night
eng
2
A Coloured Print By Shokei
eng
1
A Little Song
eng
1
Basket Dance
eng
1
Bullion
eng
1
Carrefour
eng
1
Decade
eng
1
La Ronde Du Diable
eng
1
The Bungler
eng
1
The Garden By Moonlight
eng
1
The Giver Of Stars
eng
1
The Great Adventure Of Max Breuck
eng
1
The Grocery
eng
1
The Starling
eng
1
To A Friend
eng
1
Venus Transiens
eng
1
Vespers
eng
1
Wind and Silver
eng
1
1777
eng
0
A Ballad of Footmen
eng
0
A Blockhead
eng
0
A Fairy Tale
eng
0
A Fixed Idea
eng
0
A Gift
eng
0
A Japanese Wood-Carving
eng
0
A Lady
eng
0
A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.
eng
0
A Lover
eng
0
A Petition
eng
0
A Roxbury Garden
eng
0
A Tale Of Starvation
eng
0
A Tulip Garden
eng
0
A Winter Ride
eng
0
Absence
eng
0
After Hearing A Waltz By Bartok
eng
0
Aftermath
eng
0
Aliens
eng
0
Anticipation
eng
0
Apology
eng
0
Apples Of Hesperides
eng
0
Astigmatism
eng
0
At Night
eng
0
Autumn
eng
0
Azure And Gold
eng
0
Before Dawn
eng
0
Before The Altar
eng
0
Behind A Wall
eng
0
Clear, With Light, Variable Winds
eng
0
Climbing
eng
0
Convalescence
eng
0
Crepuscule du Matin
eng
0
Crowned
eng
0
Diya
eng
0
Dreams
eng
0
Epitaph In A Church-Yard In Charleston, South Carolina
eng
0
Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success
eng
0
Fatigue
eng
0
Fool`s Money Bags
eng
0
Fragment
eng
0
Francis II, King Of Naples
eng
0
Frankincense
eng
0
Free Fantasia On Japanese Themes
eng
0
Fringed Gentians
eng
0
Generations
eng
0
Grotesque
eng
0
Happiness
eng
0
Haunted
eng
0
Hero-Worship
eng
0
Hora Stellatrix
eng
0
In A Castle
eng
0
In A Garden
eng
0
In A Time Of Dearth
eng
0
In Answer To A Request
eng
0
In Darkness
eng
0
In Excelsis
eng
0
Irony
eng
0
J--K. Huysmans
eng
0
La Vie de Boheme
eng
0
Late September
eng
0
Lead Soldiers
eng
0
Leisure
eng
0
Lilacs
eng
0
Listening
eng
0
Loon Point
eng
0
Madonna Of The Evening Flowers
eng
0
Malmaison
eng
0
March Evening
eng
0
Market Day
eng
0
Middle Age
eng
0
Mirage
eng
0
Miscast I
eng
0
Miscast II
eng
0
Monadnock In Early Spring
eng
0
Music
eng
0
Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening
eng
0
November
eng
0
Nuit Blanche
eng
0
Number 3 on the Docket
eng
0
Obligation
eng
0
Off the Turnpike
eng
0
On Carpaccio`s Picture
eng
0
Orange Of Midsummer
eng
0
Patience
eng
0
Penumbra
eng
0
Petals
eng
0
Pickthorn Manor
eng
0
Prayer For A Profusion Of Sunflowers
eng
0
Prayer For Lightning
eng
0
Prime
eng
0
Reaping
eng
0
Reflections
eng
0
Roads
eng
0
Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris
eng
0
Sea Shell
eng
0
September, 1918
eng
0
Solitaire
eng
0
Song
eng
0
Spring Day
eng
0
Storm-Racked
eng
0
Stravinsky`s
eng
0
Stupidity
eng
0
Suggested By The Cover Of A Volume Of Keats`s Poems
eng
0
Summer
eng
0
Sunshine Through A Cobwebbed Window
eng
0
Sword Blades And Poppy Seed
eng
0
Teatro Bambino. Dublin, N. H.
eng
0
The Allies
eng
0
The Artist
eng
0
The Basket
eng
0
The Blue Scarf
eng
0
The Bombardment
eng
0
The Book Of Hours Of Sister Clotilde
eng
0
The Boston Athenaeum
eng
0
The Captured Goddess
eng
0
The Coal Picker
eng
0
The Country House
eng
0
The Cremona Violin
eng
0
The Crescent Moon
eng
0
The Cross-Roads
eng
0
The Cyclists
eng
0
The Dinner-Party
eng
0
The End
eng
0
The Exeter Road
eng
0
The Fool Errant
eng
0
The Foreigner
eng
0
The Forsaken
eng
0
The Fruit Garden Path
eng
0
The Fruit Shop
eng
0
The Green Bowl
eng
0
The Hammers
eng
0
The Lamp Of Life
eng
0
The Last Quarter Of The Moon
eng
0
The Letter
eng
0
The Little Garden
eng
0
The Matrix
eng
0
The Painted Ceiling
eng
0
The Painter on Silk
eng
0
The Paper Windmill
eng
0
The Pike
eng
0
The Pleiades
eng
0
The Poet
eng
0
The Pond
eng
0
The Precinct. Rochester
eng
0
The Promise Of The Morning Star
eng
0
The Red Lacquer Music-Stand
eng
0
The Road To Avignon
eng
0
The Shadow
eng
0
The Swans
eng
0
The Taxi
eng
0
The Temple
eng
0
The Travelling Bear
eng
0
The Tree Of Scarlet Berries
eng
0
The Trout
eng
0
The Way
eng
0
The Wind
eng
0
Thompson’s Lunch Room—Grand Central Station
eng
0
To A Husband
eng
0
To An Early Daffodil
eng
0
To Elizabeth Ward Perkins
eng
0
To John Keats
eng
0
To-Morrow To Fresh Woods And Pastures New
eng
0
Towns in Colour
eng
0
Twenty-Four Hokku On A Modern Theme
eng
0
Two Lacquer Prints
eng
0
Two Travellers in the Place Vendome
eng
0
Venetian Glass
eng
0
Vintage
eng
0
White And Green
eng
0
White Currants
eng
0
Wind
eng
0
Women`s Harvest Song
eng
0
Women`s Song Of The Corn
eng
0

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