Amy Lowell Anew: A Biography
'God made me a business woman,' Amy Lowell said, 'and I made myself a poet.' Since Jean Gould'sAmy: The World of Amy Lowell and the Imagist Movement(CH, Mar'76), biographers have often focused on the poet's sexuality. This aspect of her life in relation to her poetry is addressed inAmy Lowell, American Modern, ed. by Adrienne Munich and Melissa Bradshaw (CH, Sep'04, 42-0146). Rollyson (Baruch) employs it to present Lowell as a maverick. . . . For Rollyson, Lowell's wealth was a source of authority with promoters and conflict with fellow poets. She was a strong-willed but somewhat isolated character, beset by 'enemies' and most vulnerable in her secretive relationships with younger women. There is little psychological or literary analysis, and one is left to wonder about Lowell's obsession with John Keats, her interest in classical themes, and her nuanced relationship with Ezra Pound. Clearly ambiguous (and rare) moments of feminist conviction in poems like 'The Sisters' are trotted out without explication. The volume is light, but engaging and readable. Summing Up: Recommended. . . . General readers.(CHOICE)For all of Carl Rollyson's impressive original research,Amy Lowell Anewis. . . an accessible introduction to its subject, which should do much to bring readers to this remarkable poet's work.(The Wall Street Journal)Rollyson has added a new book, Amy Lowell Anew, which delves. . . . into the interplay between Lowell's personal and professional lives. Rollyson had access to the extensive Lowell archive at Harvard University as well as resources in England. And he got help from a few archivists who located new sources, notably an archivist at the Massachusetts Historical Society who found a group of letters referring to a hitherto unknown female companion. ... The biography gives Amy Lowell her own place in the literary canon, even if it is a minor one—minor in part because of her early death, but also because her surviving partner chose to remain silent about their relationship. Rollyson put this relationship front and center to Lowell's most passionate works: her erotic poetry and her biography of Keats.(The Gay & Lesbian Review)No husband, no babies, no Victorian prudery, just sublime poetry and a secret erotic life. Amy Lowell was not what we thought she was.(Marion Meade, author of Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?)Informed by newly recovered personal accounts of Amy Lowell, Rollyson presents the growth of a poet who embraced and furthered imagism and unabashedly celebrated the body in love. He follows Lowell in her performances on the road and traces her lifelong interest in Asian culture. His abundant experience as a biographer allows Rollyson to offer a keen appreciation of Lowell’s own biography of Keats, to assess the sources of negative biographies and impressions of her, and to support the recent current of feminist recuperation of Lowell’s life and work.(Bonnie Kime Scott, professor emerita, San Diego State University and the University of Delaware)Amy Lowell Anew deserves all the prizes. It is a major work of American cultural history, restoring to readers a poet of great distinction and a public figure of immense importance to American letters and our 20th Century history. Carl Rollyson is a hero of a biographer for his rescue and rethinking the lives of many neglected or misunderstood women. His approach has always been to treat his figures with dignity and respect. Dignity and respect have been sorely lacking in works about Amy Lowell. Recently, lesbian scholars have recreated Lowell as a grand dame diva, a great leap forward. Now Rollyson moves painstakingly through the life and works, not only writing/righting wrongs but carefully resettling Amy Lowell's poetry into the American canon where it belongs. His study of her role as public speaker and cultural advocate for poetry give us at last Amy Lowell as a Public Intellectual.(Jane Marcus, distinguished professor of English and Women's Studies, CUNY Graduate Center and the City College of New York)This is the biography I've been waiting for. Carl Rollyson has exhaustively mined Lowell's archive to create a thoughtful portrait of a complicated, ambitious artist. Here, beyond the legends, the rumors, and the facile aspersions that her larger-than-life persona inspired is a woman I've wanted to meet for a very long time.(Melissa Bradshaw, author of Amy Lowell, Diva Poet)Treated as the butt of jokes by her male modernist contemporaries and by hostile biographers, Amy Lowell has been rescued from decades of homophobia, sexism, and anti-fat prejudice by this brilliant new study. Carl Rollyson turns archival research into exciting storytelling, as he brings Lowell and her passionate relationships with her lovers out of the shadows, while demonstrating why the popularity once enjoyed both by her poetry, which infuses domestic situations with eroticism and with a political consciousness, and by her public performances of it was no fluke.(Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and Professor of Humanities, University of Delaware)