English Literature

Amy Lowell was already in her adulthood when she became a poet. Born on February 9, 1874, she was born to wealth and distinction. Her family was well to do since her paternal grandfather and maternal grandfather developed the cotton industry in the state of Massachusetts. The towns of Lawrence and Lowell in Massachusetts are named after their families. The poet James Russell Lowell was the cousin of John Armory Lowell, Amy Lowells grandfather. Amy was the youngest in their family. Percival Lowell, her eldest brother was an astronomer in his late 30s and was the founder of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Her other brother, Abbott Lawrence Lowell became president of Harvard University. Their home was known as the Sevenels which stands for the Seven Ls or Lowells. Until 1883, Amy Lowell was taught by an English governess. She was then sent to a series of private schools after. She was far from being a role model student in her school. On her vacations, Amy travelled to America and Europe with her family. Coming from a wealthy family, Amy had her debut in 1891. She was invited and came into several parties that same year but no marriage proposal came, something her family was expecting.

She never went to college as university education was out of the question for her, being in the Lowell family. Although her brothers went to college, Amys family believed that girls of their family need not to go to a university. Her family deemed it was something that was not proper or appropriate for a woman. It was for that reason that Amy began collecting books in order to educate her. She read from the 7,000 volume library that her father owned. She became an avid reader so as to compensate her not going to college. She also took advantage of the availability of the Boston Athenaeum. She travelled a lot and lived as a rich socialite. Her habit of collecting books continued. There came a marriage proposal that she accepted, however the gentle man changed his mind and went on to pursue another woman. Because of that, Amy went to Egypt and Europe from 1897-1898 in order to recover. She lived on a strict diet that supposedly meant to improve her health but it nearly ruined her health.

She bought their family home, Sevenels in 1900 when both her parents had died. Her life continued to be that of a socialite  full of parties and entertaining. She followed the footsteps of her father when it came to civic involvement, supporting libraries and education in general. She had always enjoyed writing, but her writing when it comes to plays didnt satisfy her. She was captivated by the theater as she has seen Eleanora Duses performances. In 1902, her love for poetry began when she was inspired by Eleonora Duses performance in Europe. She wrote a tribute to Duse that eventually led to her becoming a poet.

In 1910, her first ever poem was published. Together with three other entries, her poem was accepted for publication in Atlantic Monthly. It was in 1912 that she published A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, her first collection of poetry.

Accordingly Lowell was a lesbian and she was lovers with Ada Dwyer Russell, an actress. She met Russell in 1912. Since then they instantly clicked and Russell became Amys living companion and travel buddy. They lived in a Boston marriage. Russell is said to be the subject behind Amys erotic works and most notably the poems about love found in Two Speak Together. They went to England together. In 1913 Lowell read a poem signed by H.D., Imagiste, giving her the ideathat she wants to become an Imagist as well. Amy met Ezra Pound when they had gone to London, a major influence and at the same time critic when it came to her work. Amy Lowell has also been romantically associated with Mercedes de Acosta, a writer, but no sufficient evidence was provided to back up the said rumor. No one was certain whether Russell and Lowells relationship was platonic or sexual.
She went back to the United States just as the World War I had begun. During those times she was already having disagreements and conflicts with Pound. According to Pound, Lowells vision of Imagism is an Amygism, for the reason that she became centered her writing in the new style as well as promoted and supported the other poets that were part of the Imagist movement.

In the year 1914, she had published her second book collection of poetry entitled Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds. A lot of the poems in this book were in free verse which she referred to as unrhymed cadence. Other poems were in polyphonic prose, a style of poetry she invented. Lowell published a collection of Imagist verse in 1915 followed by new volumes in the 2 succeeding years. Her very own lecture tours started in 1915 where she discussed her poetry and read her own books as well. The crowd was often times overflowing as she was a good and popular speaker. Her popularity is said to be probably because of her name and reputation for eccentricities, or because the originality of the Imagist poems attracted a lot of people.

Her lifestyle was different that caused a major effect on her health. She began sleeping until three in the afternoon. She worked hard late nights. She became overweight and was diagnosed with a glandular condition which in effect caused her to keep on gaining weight. Ezra Pound called Lowell a hippopoetess because of her size and weight. Due to this, she had undergone different operations for constant hernia problems and difficulties.

Amy Lowells fashion style is mannishly, wearing mens shirts and suits. Her hair was usually in a pompadour giving her additional height, and was usually done by Ada Russell. She had her own custom-made bed together with sixteen pillows. Lowell had sheepdogs which she kept until the World War I because the meat rationing forced or made her to give them up. She gave her guests towels to protect their laps from her dogs warm and friendly habits. She also had fondness draping mirrors and stopping clocks. She was also known for her smoking habits. She smoked small cigars not the big black ones, and not cigarettes. According to her, these were less distracting when it came to her work and they lasted longer.

She embarked into criticism with Six French Poets in 1915, featuring Symbolist poets that were little recognized in the United States. Amy Lowell published another volume of her poems in 1916 entitled Men, Women, and Ghosts. The following year she published Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, a book derived from all her own lectures. In 1918, she then released another poetry collection entitled Can Grandes Castle and the following year she published Pictures of the Floating World. Legends, an adaptation of legends and myths was published in 1921.

Amy Lowell wrote A Critical Fable anonymously in 1922 when she was suffering from an illness. She denied writing this for months. A Critical Fable skewered her particular poetic contemporaries that time. She also worked on a substantial biography of John Keats, a big influence on whose works shed been collecting for a long time. She worked for the following years on that biography, detailing day-by-day accounts of John Keats life. The book also gave account on Fanny Brawne as being a positive influence on Keats. Her hard work on this biography affected Amy Lowells health in a major way. She almost ruined her eyesight because of the long hours and her hernias condition continued to haunt and make things difficult for her. Her illness started to get worse and in May of 1925, her doctors advised her to stay in bed because of a troublesome hernia. She still got out of bed on May 12 and a few hours later she died from a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

Ada Russell, her partner, burned all of Amy Lowells personal correspondence as requested by Lowell before she died. Russell published three additional volumes of Lowells works as well posthumously. These works included a few sonnets to Eleanora Duse and other contentious poems that were regarded to be too controversial to publish during Lowells lifetime. Amy Lowells fortune together with their family home Sevenels were entrusted to Ada Russell.

The Imagist movement were Amy Lowell was active didnt last for long as well. The poems written by Amy Lowell didnt endure the test of time. Some of her poems like Lilacs and Patterns were still recognized but she was almost gone in the minds of the people.

It was Lilian Faderman and the others who began to rediscovered Amy Lowell as an example of poets who was a lesbian and had a same-sex relationship that was important in her life but was not frank and open about it for apparent social principles. Clear, With Light Variable Winds, Taxi, A Lady, and Venus Transiens were some of the poems re-examined by Faderman and found the underlying theme on the poems  the love or romance of women. Two Speak Together and A Decade where regarded as poetry of love. The latter work spoke of the celebration of Amy and Adas ten year anniversary relationship. The theme or idea behind Amys work was not completely masked specially to those people that knew the lovers quite well. A friend of Amy Lowell had long recognized Ada to be subject of Lowells work. However, the likeness of the committed relationship as well as love between Ada Russell and Amy Lowell was for the most part unrecognized until the recent times.

Possible Lowells poetry was not satisfactorily recognized or regarded throughout her lifetime, but she did write over 650 poems, and she is now acknowledged to be the first ever American woman poet to regard herself as element or factor of a feminine literary tradition, seen and reflected in poetries such as The Sisters. Amy Lowells contemporaries did understand that Lowell made American poetry by means of her personal innovations and her undying support of other poets. She was so persuasive when it comes to large crowds and the public got interested on her new poetry of imagism style and literary judgments.

A year after Amy Lowells death she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her Whats OClock work. The patriotic poem Lilacs was part of that collection and critics claimed that it was one of her best works. Her life and poetry were almost forgotten, but thanks to gender studies which arose as a discipline, Lowell was regarded as an illustration of earlier lesbianism. She was referred to as demon saleswoman of poetry by T.S. Eliot.