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In her reassessment of Amy Lowell as a major figure in the modern
American poetry movement, Melissa Bradshaw uses theories of the
diva and female celebrity to account for Lowell's extraordinary
literary influence in the early twentieth century and her equally
extraordinary disappearance from American letters after her death.
Recognizing Amy Lowell as a literary diva, Bradshaw shows, accounts
for her commitment to her art, her extravagant self-promotion and
self-presentation, and her fame, which was of a kind no longer
associated with poets. It also explains the devaluation of Lowell's
poetry and criticism, since a woman's diva status is always
short-lived and the accomplishments of celebrity women are
typically dismissed and trivialized. In restoring Lowell to her
place within the American poetic renaissance of the nineteen-teens
and twenties, Bradshaw also recovers a vibrant moment in popular
culture when poetry enjoyed mainstream popularity, audiences packed
poetry readings, and readers avidly followed the honors, exploits,
and feuds of their favorite poets in the literary columns of daily
newspapers. Drawing on a rich array of letters, memoirs,
newspapers, and periodicals, but eschewing the biographical
interpretations of her poetry that have often characterized
criticism on Lowell, Bradshaw gives us an Amy Lowell who could not
be further removed from the lonely victim of ill-health and obesity
who appears in earlier book-length studies. Amy Lowell as diva poet
takes her rightful place as a powerful writer of modernist verse
who achieved her personal and professional goals without
capitulating to heteronormative ideals of how a woman should act,
think, or appear.
Amy Lowell (1874-1925), American poet and critic, was one of the
most influential and best-known writers of her era. Within a
thirteen-year period, she produced six volumes of poetry, two
volumes of criticism, a two-volume biography of John Keats, and
countless articles and reviews that appeared in many popular
periodicals. As a herald of the New Poetry, Lowell saw herself and
her kind of work as a part of a newly forged, diverse, American
people that registered its consciousness in different tonalities
but all in a native idiom. She helped build the road leading to the
later works of Allen Ginsberg, May Sarton, Sylvia Plath, and
beyond. Except for the few poems that invariably appear in American
literature anthologies, most of her writings are out of print. This
will be the first volume of her work to appear in decades, and the
depth, range, and surprising sensuality of her poems will be a
revelation.
The poetry is organized according to Lowell's characteristic forms,
from traditional to experimental. In each section the works appear
in chronological order. Section one contains sonnets and other
traditional verse forms. The next section covers her translations
and adaptations of Chinese and Japanese poetry, whereby she
beautifully renders the spirit of these works. Also included here
are several of Lowell's own Asian-influenced poems. Lowell's free,
or cadenced verse appears in the third part. The last section
provides samples of Lowell's polyphonic prose, an ambitious and
vigorous art form that employs all of the resources of poetry.
The release of "The Selected Poems of Amy Lowell "will be a major
event for readers who have not been able to find a representative
sampling of work from this vigorous, courageous poet who gave voice
to an erotic, thoroughly American sensibility.
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