Your posts are always so detailed, slightly opinionated (yeah!) and so fascinating to read. Harold Bloom obviously should bow down to you.
I particularly love the last two lines of The Taxi. Normally, I would hate a bland title like "The Taxi," but when you've got all that emotion in the lines that follow (as Broun says of Lowell herself,) a perfectly neutral intro is devastatingly right.
Having read up a bit on Amy Lowell, I'm reminded of the book Possession, by A.S. Byatt, which I read not long ago. (She invented a Victorian poet who was reputed to be a lesbian, but who had an affair with a married Victorian male poet, and in inventing both of the poets, she invented their poetry, too.) There's a great line from a letter in which the woman, Lamott, writes "Did you not flame, and I catch fire?" Somehow, that evokes both the last lines of "Summer Rain" and the idea within the Broun quote.
I have been sucked into these poems and these words and these stories and these people and the images are swirling in my head...I now will seek out more and more and do what I do best to honor these folks and what they do best...
You are very welcome. Amy Lowell was a Massachusetts girl, so I'm sure you can find out lots about her up there. She's a little, er, beefier than your usual subjects, but I'm thinking that might be really interesting for you. She smoked cigars and wore pince-nez glasses, which is decidedly cool, no?
When was she born and how old was she when she died in 1925?
I've never heard the term "Boston marriage". Was this because she lived in that area in what was a gay community or was this a term used in other areas?
Was it her first published work that won the Prize or was she well known/ published by then?
She was 51 when she died, and was born in 1874. (I remembered her age, but had to look up her birthdate -- weird, right?)
I'd heard the term "Boston marriage" before a long time ago -- it was a term used in the 19th century to describe a household consisting of two unmarried women (not all "Boston marriages" were necessarily lesbian or sexual in nature). Per Wikipedia, the term is still in use to describe two women who live together in a committed relationship, but one that is not sexual in nature. (Think co-habiting spinsters, if you will.) She did not live in a gay community, nor did such a thing truly exist during her lifetime. She lived in Sevenels, a mansion in Brookline, Mass. owned by the Lowell family.
Her first poetry collection was published in 1910, and she published quite a number of her own collections as well as anthologies of poems prior to her death, and she was a noted speaker as well as a book reviewer. Her brother was the President of Harvard, I believe, at the time.
TadMack says:
anonymous
September 28 2007, 14:36:50 UTC
A Boston Marriage is a marriage between women, isn't it?
I've not read much of Amy Lowell, but I really do like what I've read. I, too, need to expand my adult poetry selections, so very many thanks for this!
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I particularly love the last two lines of The Taxi. Normally, I would hate a bland title like "The Taxi," but when you've got all that emotion in the lines that follow (as Broun says of Lowell herself,) a perfectly neutral intro is devastatingly right.
Sara Lewis Holmes
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I have been sucked into these poems and these words and these stories and these people and the images are swirling in my head...I now will seek out more and more and do what I do best to honor these folks and what they do best...
...and all because of what you do best!
Thank you
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I was intrigued by her "sisters" and her rivals (Pound) and friends (Eliot)....
I love a "circus" of characters!
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When was she born and how old was she when she died in 1925?
I've never heard the term "Boston marriage". Was this because she lived in that area in what was a gay community or was this a term used in other areas?
Was it her first published work that won the Prize or was she well known/ published by then?
Reply
I'd heard the term "Boston marriage" before a long time ago -- it was a term used in the 19th century to describe a household consisting of two unmarried women (not all "Boston marriages" were necessarily lesbian or sexual in nature). Per Wikipedia, the term is still in use to describe two women who live together in a committed relationship, but one that is not sexual in nature. (Think co-habiting spinsters, if you will.) She did not live in a gay community, nor did such a thing truly exist during her lifetime. She lived in Sevenels, a mansion in Brookline, Mass. owned by the Lowell family.
Her first poetry collection was published in 1910, and she published quite a number of her own collections as well as anthologies of poems prior to her death, and she was a noted speaker as well as a book reviewer. Her brother was the President of Harvard, I believe, at the time.
Reply
I've not read much of Amy Lowell, but I really do like what I've read. I, too, need to expand my adult poetry selections, so very many thanks for this!
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