Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (Mint Editions (Reading With Pride)) - Softcover

Lowell, Amy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1513295861 ISBN 13: 9781513295862

Publisher: Mint Editions, 2021

Synopsis

Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914) is a poetry collection by Amy Lowell. Published at the beginning of her career as an influential imagist devoted to classical poetic themes and forms, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed is an agile and promising work from a pioneering poet of the early twentieth century. The title poem of Lowell’s collection is an imaginative voyage into the mind of a poet struggling with writer’s block, who scans the city for “the slightest tinge of gold” to no avail: “From time to time I wrote a word / Which lines and circles overscored. / My table seemed a graveyard, full / Of coffins waiting burial.” Disgusted with her inability to write anything meaningful, she takes the streets, encountering a strange old man―part poppy dealer, part devil―who offers success in exchange for the poet’s soul. Personal and public, keenly engaged with tradition―the Faustian legend, in particular―while maintaining her own private voice, Lowell’s poems are an essential contribution to one of humanity’s oldest art forms. Sword Blades and Poppy Seed is a vibrant collection from an emerging poet who would come to define the imagist movement throughout her storied career. This edition Amy Lowell’s Sword Blades and Poppy Seed is a classic work of American poetry reimagined for modern readers.

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About this title

About the Author

Amy Lowell (1874-1925) was an American poet. Born into an elite family of businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals, Lowell was a member of the so-called Boston Brahmin class. She excelled in school from a young age and developed a habit for reading and book collecting. Denied the opportunity to attend college by her family, Lowell traveled extensively in her twenties and turned to poetry in 1902. While in England with her lover Ada Dwyer Russell, she met American poet Ezra Pound, whose influence as an imagist and fierce critic of Lowell’s work would prove essential to her poetry. In 1912, only two years after publishing her first poem in The Atlantic Monthly, Lowell produced A Dome of Many-Coloured Glasses, her debut volume of poems. In addition to such collections of her own poems as Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914) and Men, Women, and Ghosts (1916), Lowell published translations of 8th century Chinese poet Li Tai-po and, at the time of her death, had been working on a biography of English Romantic John Keats.

From the Back Cover

“From time to time I wrote a word / Which lines and circles overscored. / My table seemed a graveyard, full / Of coffins waiting burial.” In her second volume of poems, Amy Lowell explores the highs and lows inherent to writing, the countless errors which precede any triumph. Sword Blades and Poppy Seed is a poetry collection by Amy Lowell.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mint Editions
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1513295861
• ISBN 13: 9781513295862
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 154