"There's nothing to match curling up with a good book

when there's a repair job to be done

around the house."

Joe Ryan

******

Sunday

Incredible Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

I decided some time ago to find more about that poetess...OMG (is that what to say?!!)...She was such a character, the way she often dressed like a man, the way she smoke the cigar, wore a pince-nez, slept with sixteen pillows...the way she wraped her guests in towels to protect them from her dogs'"affectionate habits"...and that story of Boston marriage. In the 19th century!!!When I think about all the fuss, the fight, the discussion about marriage between two people of the same sex all over Europe and when I learn it was possible in Boston in the 19th century!!!you imagine my surprise...And those women weren't even bound to be lesbians...It's extraordinary, but why don't people talk more about it...Amy Lowel and her friend Ada Dwyer Russell lived such a marriage...I'm not at all interested to know if they were having sex or not. It was their lives, the lived it the way they wanted to and it's nobody's business...But it's really a great story...yesterday a friend told me I was a brazen mousie, I didn't know the word and found it very funny...But such women were completely brazen for the society weren't they? if not we must be very old fashioned...That's great to discover such nice talentuous women...

Madonna of the Evening Flowers

All day long I have been working,
Now I am tired.
I call: "Where are you?"
But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely:
Where are you?I go about searching.
Then I see you,

Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
And you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes.
You tell me that the peonies need spraying,

That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur.
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud, sweet `Te Deums' of the Canterbury bells.

It's young, fresh, vivid, full of love, just beautiful...
Amy , you really were an incredible woman...
PS: she would be a beautiful character in a film...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just wrote a Sunday column for Creative Sundays for "create a connetion" blog on baths - and used Amy Lowell's depiction of a bather in it. (it won't be published until this coming sunday) I discovered her and the imagists in my junior year of high school (65?) and wrote my year's term paper on her. And now I find here here! I love that! And I have always loved her outrageousness (brazen is a good word for her).

Rowan said...

I've recently found your delightful bog via KerdelLune's site. I( look forward to exploring it.
This is a lovely poem by Amy Lowell,I can see the garden she describes in my mind. I haven't come across her before. She sounds quite a lady!

Rowan said...

Sorry! I meant to type delightful BLOG not delightful bog:):)