Personal anthology: H.D.
This is in honor of my finally having unpacked my books and filled my bookshelves. I’d almost forgotten I had a copy of this lovely little anthology of Imagist poetry, but I was very happy to dig it out of the bottom of a box. My mother had this book when I was growing up, and I used to read through it, poem by poem. It was quite possibly my first introduction to Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and Amy Lowell. When I found a copy in a used bookstore some months ago, I realized that I remembered nearly everything in it.
(Michelle, wasn’t it you who had a whole bunch of posts about H.D. on your old blog? I couldn’t find them to link to them, but if I could, I would.)
Song
You are as gold
as the half-ripe grain
that merges to gold again,
as white as the white rain
that beats through
the half-opened flowers
of the great flower tufts
thick on the black limbs
of an Illyrian apple bough.Can honey distill such fragrance
as your bright hair —yet as rain that lies clear
on white honey-comb,
lends radiance to the white wax,
so your hair on your brow
casts light for a shadow.— H.D.
Yes, it was me. I had a full-blown HD crush when I encountered her in an expatriates seminar and as soon as the semester ended, I read her quite a bit and had a couple of gushing posts under my “Books” category (which is small because I’ve been less than organized with my categories but have returned it to the side bar just now since my archives don’t seem to be working).
The first thing I did when I saw that Imagist poetry book you cited (before I even saw your link to me) was click to see if HD was referenced. I wish I’d been lucky enough to have read her as a child. 🙂
This poem evokes Sappho beautifully — as H.D. was wont to do.