RonPrice
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joined: Jan 11, 07
posts: 6 |
| subject: Amy Lowell:1912 Dome |
posted: Jan 11, 07 4:16 pm  |
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THE DOME
While 'Abdu'l-Baha was on his western tour, Amy Lowell(1874-1925) was promoting poetry in the USA. Her first book of published poetry appeared during 'Abdu'l-Baha's trip in 1912. Poetry had become the consuming passion of Amy Lowell’s life. When she was not writing poetry, she was promoting it—both her own and that of her contemporaries whose projects complemented hers. In magazine reviews, short articles, two prose volumes of poetry criticism, and most especially on the lecture circuit, Lowell preached the gospel of the new poetry. Almost from the street corner, she cried aloud, ‘Poetry, Poetry, this way to Poetry.’ When she died in 1925 interest in her poetry died with her because her poems needed her flamboyant personality and vigor, her demonstrative theatricality to give them life. She aggressively marketed herself and her poetry as high culture. She was the Liberace of modern poetry. She made of poetry, itself an intimidating art form for most people, accessible, popularized. She repackaged it for a middle-class audience. In recent years there has been a recrudescence of interest in her work.-Ron Price with thanks to Melissa Bradshaw, "Outselling the Modernisms of Men: Amy Lowell and the Art of Self-Commodification," Victorian Poetry, Vol. 38, No.1, 2000.
You converted them left and right
by the relief of hearing verse they
could enjoy without getting into
any special-suspect state of mind.
You surprised audiences by being
clear, sincere, direct, intelligible.
Your extravagant persona, theatrical,
fit for stages all over the country was
not your poet stereotype. The poet,
you argued, should have a passionate
desire for truth and a dispassionate
attitude toward whatever his search
for truth may bring him. He records
you said. He does not moralize. He is
the champion of our everyday speech.1
And you socked-it to 'em when that
tremendous figure, that mysterious
and magnetic personality, that unique
branch grown from that sacred root
with His styles and titles--you knew
Him not. That Dome of Many Coloured
Glass2 had just begun to colour the world.
1 Melissa Bradshaw, "Outselling the Modernisms of Men: Amy Lowell and the Art of Self-Commodification, Victorian Poetry, Vol. 38, No.1, 2000; 2 The name of her 1912 book. For me this Dome serves as an allusion to the new Administrative Order that had just begun to take form in the last two decades of Lowell's life.
Ron Price
11 January 2007  |
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