|
|
Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) (1886 - 1961)
|
|
|
|
Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
|
 H.D.
and the Victorian Fin De Siecle : Gender, Modernism, Decadence by
Cassandra Laity
H.D. and the Victorian Fin de Siecle argues that
the 20th-century American woman poet H.D. shaped an alternative
poetic modernism of female desire from the "feminine"
personae, images and forms of Decadent Romanticism that male
modernists such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and W.B. Yeats
denounced as "effeminate." The book is the first
examination of female modernism to demonstrate extensively the
impact of the Decadents and their fluid poetics of androgyny,
homoeroticism and role-reversal on a modernist woman writer.
 HERmione
by
Hilda Doolittle, Perdita Schaffner (Designer)
HERmione is the semi-autobiographical
tale of Hilda Doolittle's early twenties. A young, confused woman
about to come of age, Hermione Gart is split between her old self
and a new, true identity. She is ill-at-ease with her life after
returning home from a failed career at Bryn Mawr and a brash
relationship with George Lowndes (a thinly-veiled portrait of Ezra
Pound). "I am HER, HER, HER," H.D. writes, "Names
are in people; people are in names. God is in a word. God is in
HER." The depth of Hermione's painful self-reflection is
beautifully transcribed in this eerie interior monologue which
describes the twists and turns of the H.D. character, her torrid
affair with George Lowndes, and the beginnings of her relationship
with Fayne Rabb (representing Frances Josepha Gregg). Hermione's
relationship with Fayne, the turning point in her life, forces her
to gather her fragmented self together into a whole person.
Primarily known for her poetry, H.D. has produced a lush, vivid
portrayal of the inner psyche, written in an experimental,
disjointed style which creates a tapestry of Hermione's deepest
feelings. -- Heather Downey, From 500
Great Books by Women
 Trilogy
by H.
D.
This reissue of the classic "Trilogy"
by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961), now includes a large section
of referential notes for readers and students, compiled by
Professor Aliki Barnstone. As civilian war poetry (written under
the shattering impact of World War II). "Trilogy's"
three long poems rank with T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets"
and Ezra Pound's "Pisan Cantos." The first book of the
Trilogy, "The Walls Do Not Fall," published in the midst
of the "fifty thousand incidents" of the London blitz,
maintains the hope that though "we have no map; / possibly we
will reach haven,/ heaven." "Tribute to Angels"
describes new life springing from the ruins, and finally, in
"The Flowering of the Rod"--with its epigram
"...pause to give/ thanks that we rise again from death and
live."--faith in love and resurrection is realized in lyric
and strongly Biblical imagery.
"H.D. spoke of essentials. It is a
simplicity not of reduction but of having gone further our of the
circle of known light, further toward an unknown center." -- Denise
Levertov
"This ecstasy,
ecstasy in language, in beautiful language, is what carries me
through the entire trilogy, not only content with her tricks...not
only content with these high-handed fictions but enchanted with
her whole poem, not to say enraptured." -- Hayden
Carruth, The Hudson Review
|
|
This site hosts information on her writing, the H.D.
International Society, and her many friends and associates.
|
|
Drawn from Herself Defined: the Poet H.D. and
Her World, by Barbara Guest
Excerpt:
H.D., Hilda Doolittle, was born on September 10,
1886, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Her mother a Moravian, and her
father an astronomer, she grew up to be what some have called the
finest of all Imagist poets. Her accomplishments, though, extended
far beyond her early Imagist poems. Her poetry, fiction, and
non-fiction writings were published on both sides of the Atlantic,
and her roles in a few early films also earned her praise. Most of
the awards, including the Gold Medal from the American Academy of
Arts and Letters, and the Brandeis and Longview Awards came late
in her life, when her poetry had begun to break away from strict
Imagism...
|
|
Site by Jennifer Lynne Pyzik
This site hosts a biography, several poems
and related links.
Excerpt:
Her pen name H.D. was given to her by Ezra
Pound. Pound was also responsible for submitting three of her
poems in Harriet Monroe's influential magazine, Poetry. These
poems were among the first important products of the "imagist
movement": where poems lacked explanation, unrhymed and
lacked regular beat. The power of an image was relied on to gain
attention and convey emotion...
|
|
From the Academy
of American Poets
Excerpt:
Hilda Doolittle was born in Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1886. She attended Bryn Mawr, as a
classmate of Marianne
Moore, and later the University of Pennsylvania where she
befriended Ezra
Pound and William
Carlos Williams. She travelled to Europe in 1911, intending to
spend only a summer, but remained abroad for the rest of her life.
Through Pound, H. D. grew interested in and quickly became a
leader of the Imagist movement. Some of her earliest poems gained
recognition when they were published by Harriet Monroe in Poetry...
|
|
The H.D. Newsletter was published between 1987
and 1991 by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, and
edited by Eileen Gregory. The tables of contents of each issue are
listed below with the kind permission of Ms. Gregory. Links are
provided to selected articles which have been made available on
the web through the kind permission of their authors.
|
Poems (Online e-texts)
|
|
|
|
Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
|
|
