Amy Lowell Quotes

All books are either dreams or swords, You can cut, or you can drug, with words.

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against The want of you; Of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it.

A black cat among roses, phlox, lilac-misted under a quarter moon, the sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still. It is dazed with moonlight, contented with perfume...

For books are more than books, they are the life The very heart and core of ages past, The reason why men lived and worked and died, The essence and quintessence of their lives.

You are ice and fire The touch of you burns my hands like snow

I loved that Amy Lowell poem when I first read it, how her lover was like red wine at the beginning and then became bread. But that has not happened to me. My loves remain wine to me, yet I become too quickly bread to them.

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against The want of you

All books are either dreams or swords.

Everything mortal has moments immortal

Decade When you came, you were like red wine and honey, And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness. Now you are like morning bread, Smooth and pleasant. I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour, But I am completely nourished.

Both Fen & Helen needed me to choose, to be their one & only when I didn’t want a one & only. I loved that Amy Lowell poem when I first read it, how her lover was like red wine at the beginning and then became bread. But that has not happened to me. My loves remain wine to me, yet I become too quickly bread to them.

My eyes ache with the weight of unshed tears. You are my home, do you not understand?

You are ice and fire, The touch of you burns my hands like snow. You are cold and flame. You are the crimson of amaryllis, The silver of moon-touched magnolias. When I am with you, My heart is a frozen pond Gleaming with agitated torches.

You lie upon my heart as on a nest, Folded in peace, for you can never know How crushed I am with having you at rest Heavy upon my life. I love you so You bind my freedom from its rightful quest. In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.

She laughed. ‘Was she wine or bread to you?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘It’s from an Amy Lowell poem we all loved in college. Wine is sort of thrilling and sensual, and bread is familiar and essential.

Don’t ask a writer what he’s working on. It’s like asking someone with cancer on the progress of his disease.

Even Pain pricks to livelier living.

Underneath my stiffened gown Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin, A basin in the midst of hedges grown So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding, But she guesses he is near, And the sliding of the water Seems the stroking of a dear Hand upon her.

Christ! What are patterns for?

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Venus Transiens" Tell me, Was Venus more beautiful Than you are, When she topped The crinkled waves, Drifting shoreward On her plaited shell? Was Botticelli’s vision Fairer than mine; And were the painted rosebuds He tossed his lady Of better worth Than the words I blow about you To cover your too great loveliness As with a gauze Of misted silver? For me, You stand poised In the blue and buoyant air, Cinctured by bright winds, Treading the sunlight. And the waves which precede you Ripple and stir The sands at my feet. Amy Lowell, Imagist Poetry: An Anthology. Ed. Bob Blaisdell (Dover Publications; Later Printing edition, March 17, 2011)

I do know I can lie awake all night and it feels as if someone is cutting out my stomach the pain of having lost her is so awful. And I am angry that I was made to choose, that both Fen & Helen needed me to choose, to be their one & only when I didn’t want a one & only. I loved that Amy Lowell poem when I first read it, how her lover was like red wine at the beginning and then became bread. But that has not happened to me. My loves remain wine to me, yet I become too quickly bread to them. It was unfair, the way I had to decide one way or another in Marseille. Perhaps I made the conventional choice, the easy way for my work, my reputation, and of course for a child. A child that does not come.

Vernal Equinox The scent of hyacinths, like a pale mist, lies between me and my book; And the South Wind, washing through the room, Makes the candles quiver. My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter, And I am uneasy with the thrusting of green shoots Outside, in the night. Why are you not here to overpower me with your tense and urgent love?

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

For I have time for nothing But the endeavour to balance myself Upon a broken world.

Witch-heart, are you gold or black?

The Taxi When I go away from you The world beats dead Like a slackened drum. I call out for you against the jutted stars And shout into the ridges of the wind. Streets coming fast, One after the other, Wedge you away from me, And the lamps of the city prick my eyes So that I can no longer see your face. Why should I leave you, To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?

The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies white and unspotted, in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness sweep into the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The air is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight. See how the roof glitters, like ice! Over there, a slice of yellow cuts into the silver-blue, and beside it stand two geraniums, purple because the light is silver-blue, to-night.

The stigma of oddness is the price a myopic world always exacts of genius.

Was she wine or bread to you?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘It’s from an Amy Lowell poem we all loved in college. Wine is sort of thrilling and sensual, and bread is familiar and essential.

The Giver of Stars by Amy Lowell Hold your soul open for my welcoming. Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me With its clear and rippled coolness, That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest, Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.

I am closest to Amy Lowell, in actuality, I think. I love the lyrics clarity and purity of Elinor Wylie, the whimsical, lyrical, typographically eccentric verse of e e cummings, and yearn towards T.S. Eliot, Archibald Macleish, Conrad Aiken...

She laughed. ‘Was she wine or bread to you?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘It’s from an Amy Lowell poem we all loved in college. Wine is sort of thrilling and sensual, and bread is familiar and essential.’ ‘Wine, I suppose.’ ‘Would it have turned to bread?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘It doesn’t always.’ ‘No, I suppose not.

Apples of Hesperides Glinting golden through the trees, Apples of Hesperides! Through the moon-pierced warp of night Shoot pale shafts of yellow light, Swaying to the kissing breeze Swings the treasure, golden-gleaming, Apples of Hesperides!. Far and lofty yet they glimmer, Apples of Hesperides! Blinded by their radiant shimmer, Pushing forward just for these; Dew-besprinkled, bramble-marred, Poor duped mortal, travel-scarred, Always thinking soon to seize And possess the golden-glistening Apples of Hesperides!. Orbed, and glittering, and pendent, Apples of Hesperides! Not one missing, still transcendent, Clustering like a swarm of bees. Yielding to no man's desire, Glowing with a saffron fire, Splendid, unassailed, the golden Apples of Hesperides!

Taking us by and large, we're a queer lot We women who write poetry. And when you think How few of us there've been, it's queerer still. I wonder what it is that makes us do it, Singles us out to scribble down, man-wise, The fragments of ourselves. Why are we Already mother-creatures, double-bearing, With matrices in body and in brain? I rather think that there is just the reason We are so sparse a kind of human being; The strength of forty thousand Atlases Is needed for our every-day concerns. There's Sapho, now I wonder what was Sapho. I know a single slender thing about her: That, loving, she was like a burning birch-tree All tall and glittering fire, and that she wrote Like the same fire caught up to Heaven and held there, A frozen blaze before it broke and fell. Ah, me! I wish I could have talked to Sapho, Surprised her reticences by flinging mine Into the wind. This tossing off of garments Which cloud the soul is none too easy doing With us to-day. But still I think with Sapho One might accomplish it, were she in the mood to bare her loveliness of words and tell The reasons, as she possibly conceived them of why they are so lovely. Just to know How she came at them, just watch The crisp sea sunshine playing on her hair, And listen, thinking all the while 'twas she Who spoke and that we two were sisters Of a strange, isolated little family. And she is Sapho -- Sapho -- not Miss or Mrs., A leaping fire we call so for convenience....

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

Nuit Blanche" A music coaxed from humming strings would please; Not plucked, but drawn in creeping cadences Across a sunset wall where some Marquise Picks a pale rose amid strange silences. Ghostly and vaporous her gown sweeps by The twilight dusking wall, I hear her feet Delaying on the gravel, and a sigh, Briefly permitted, touches the air like sleet And it is dark, I hear her feet no more. A red moon leers beyond the lily-tank. A drunken moon ogling a sycamore, Running long fingers down its shining flank. A lurching moon, as nimble as a clown, Cuddling the flowers and trees which burn like glass. Red, kissing lips, I feel you on my gown— Kiss me, red lips, and then pass—pass. Music, you are pitiless to-night. And I so old, so cold, so languorously white.

Bath" The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air. The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light. Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots. The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.

The Letter" Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper Like draggled fly's legs, What can you tell of the flaring moon Through the oak leaves? Or of my uncertain window and the bare floor Spattered with moonlight? Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them Of blossoming hawthorns, And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness Beneath my hand. I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against The want of you; Of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it. And I scald alone, here, under the fire Of the great moon. Amy Lowell, The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell. Edited by Melissa Bradshaw. (Rutgers University Press November 30, 2002)

Fragment" What is poetry? Is it a mosaic Of coloured stones which curiously are wrought Into a pattern? Rather glass that's taught By patient labor any hue to take And glowing with a sumptuous splendor, make Beauty a thing of awe; where sunbeams caught, Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraught With storied meaning for religion's sake.

Carrefour” O You, Who came upon me once Stretched under apple-trees just after bathing, Why did you not strangle me before speaking Rather than fill me with the wild white honey of your words And then leave me to the mercy Of the forest bees. Originally published in Coterie: A Quarterly: Art, Prose, and Poetry No. 4. Edited by Lall Chaman (1920)

We do not ask the trees to teach us moral lessons, and only the Salvation Army feels it necessary to pin texts upon them. We know that these texts are ridiculous, but many of us do not yet see that to write an obvious moral all over a work of art, picture, statue, or poem, is not only ridiculous, but timid and vulgar. We distrust a beauty we only half understand, and rush in with our impertinent suggestions.

The Wheel of the Sun" I beg you Hide your face from me. Draw the tissue of your head-gear Over your eyes. For I am blinded by your beauty, And my heart is strained, And aches, Before you. In the street, You spread a brightness where you walk, And I see your lifting silks And rejoice; But I cannot look up to your face. You melt my strength, And set my knees to trembling. Shadow yourself that I may love you, For now it is too great a pain.

Aubade" As I would free the white almond from the green husk So I would strip your trappings off, Beloved. And fingering the smooth and polished kernel I should see that in my hands glittered a gem beyond counting. Decade When you came, you were like red wine and honey, And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness. Now you are like morning bread, Smooth and pleasant. I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour, But I am completely nourished.

The Garden by Moonlight" A black cat among roses, Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon, The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still, It is dazed with moonlight, Contented with perfume, Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies. Firefly lights open and vanish High as the tip buds of the golden glow Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet. Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises, Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush. Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring, Only the cat, padding between the roses, Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern As water is broken by the falling of a leaf. Then you come, And you are quiet like the garden, And white like the alyssum flowers, And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies. Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies? They knew my mother, But who belonging to me will they know When I am gone.

The Letter" Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper Like draggled fly’s legs, What can you tell of the flaring moon Through the oak leaves? Or of my uncertain window and the bare floor Spattered with moonlight? Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them Of blossoming hawthorns, And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness Beneath my hand. I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against The want of you; Of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it. And I scald alone, here, under the fire Of the great moon.

Before me lies a mass of shapeless days, Unseparated atoms, and I must Sort them apart and live them. Sifted dust Covers the formless heap. Reprieves, delays, There are none, ever. As a monk who prays The sliding beads asunder, so I thrust Each tasteless particle aside, and just Begin again the task which never stays. And I have known a glory of great suns, When days flashed by, pulsing with joy and fire! Drunk bubbled wine in goblets of desire, And felt the whipped blood laughing as it runs! Spilt is that liquor, my too hasty hand Threw down the cup, and did not understand.

In Darkness" Must all of worth be travailled for, and those Life's brightest stars rise from a troubled sea? Must years go by in sad uncertainty Leaving us doubting whose the conquering blows, Are we or Fate the victors? Time which shows All inner meanings will reveal, but we Shall never know the upshot. Ours to be Wasted with longing, shattered in the throes, The agonies of splendid dreams, which day Dims from our vision, but each night brings back; We strive to hold their grandeur, and essay To be the thing we dream. Sudden we lack The flash of insight, life grows drear and gray, And hour follows hour, nerveless, slack.

September, 1918" This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight; The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves; The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves, And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows. Under a tree in the park, Two little boys, lying flat on their faces, Were carefully gathering red berries To put in a pasteboard box. Some day there will be no war, Then I shall take out this afternoon And turn it in my fingers, And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate, And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves. To-day I can only gather it And put it into my lunch-box, For I have time for nothing But the endeavour to balance myself Upon a broken world.

Strain IT is late And the clock is striking thin hours, But sleep has become a terror to me, Lest I wake in the night Bewildered, And stretching out my arms to comfort myself with you, Clasp instead the cold body of the darkness. All night it will hunger over me, And push and undulate against me, Breathing into my mouth And passing long fingers through my drifting hair. Only the dawn can loose me from it, And the gray streaks of morning melt it from my side. Bring many candles, Though they stab my tired brain And hurt it. For I am afraid of the twining of the darkness And dare not sleep.

For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past.

This is America, This vast, confused beauty, This staring, restless speed of loveliness, Mighty, overwhelming, crude, of all forms, Making grandeur out of profusion, Afraid of no incongruities, Sublime in its audacity, Bizarre breaker of moulds, Laughing with strength, Charging down on the past, Glorious and conquering, Destroyer, builder, Invincible pith and marrow of the world, An old world remaking, Whirling into the no-world of all-colored light.

To A Friend" I ask but one thing of you, only one, That always you will be my dream of you; That never shall I wake to find untrue All this I have believed and rested on, Forever vanished, like a vision gone Out into the night. Alas, how few There are who strike in us a chord we knew Existed, but so seldom heard its tone We tremble at the half-forgotten sound. The world is full of rude awakenings And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground, Yet still our human longing vainly clings To a belief in beauty through all wrongs. O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

Quand vous êtes venue, vous m’étiez vin rouge et miel, Et votre goût me brûla la langue de sa douceur, À présent vous voilà pain matinal, Mou et agréable. Je vous goûte à peine, tellement votre saveur m’est connue, Pourtant je suis complètement nourrie.

All God’s angels come to us disguised. ~James Russell Lowell

The Letter" Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper Like draggled fly's legs, What can you tell of the flaring moon Through the oak leaves? Or of my uncertain window and the bare floor Spattered with moonlight? Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them Of blossoming hawthorns, And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness Beneath my hand. I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against The want of you; Of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it. And I scald alone, here, under the fire Of the great moon. Amy Lowell, Selected Poems of Amy Lowell. Edited by Melissa Bradshaw. (Rutgers University Press November 30, 2002)

Grotesque" Why do the lilies goggle their tongues at me When I pluck them; And writhe, and twist, And strangle themselves against my fingers, So that I can hardly weave the garland For your hair? Why do they shriek your name And spit at me When I would cluster them? Must I kill them To make them lie still, And send you a wreath of lolling corpses To turn putrid and soft On your forehead While you dance? Amy Lowell, Imagist Poetry: An Anthology. Ed. Bob Blaisdell (Dover Publications; Later Printing edition, March 17, 2011)

The Letter" Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper Like draggled fly's legs, What can you tell of the flaring moon Through the oak leaves? Or of my uncurtained window and the bare floor Spattered with moonlight? Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them Of blossoming hawthorns, And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness Beneath my hand. I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against The want of you; Of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it. And I scald alone, here, under the fire Of the great moon. Amy Lowell, Imagist Poetry: An Anthology. Ed. Bob Blaisdell (Dover Publications; Later Printing edition, March 17, 2011)

I stand in the window and watch the moon. She is thin and lustreless, But I love her. I know the moon, And this is an alien city.

Moonlight in a quiet garden that is her beauty.

It's a little bit sad, when you seem very near To adventures and things of that sort, Which nearly begin, and then don't; and you know It is only because you are short.

His youth had scarcely melted into manhood

Harold Monro, with his Poetry Bookshop at 35 Devonshire Street in Bloomsbury, was a mentor and inspiration. In 1913 he had turned an eighteenth-century house into a shop, publishing house and meeting place for poets and readers. At his own expense he published poetry and edited The Poetry Review. The shop was on the ground floor. The poet Amy Lowell called it a room rather than a shop. There was a coal fire, comfortable chairs, a cat and a couple of dogs. Offices were on the first floor, poetry readings were held on the second, and at the top were two attic rooms for poets and artists who needed cheap lodgings.

Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening

Stippling the white-washed walls with dancing shades and quavers. A bed-post, grown colossal, jigs about the ceiling, And shadows, strangely altered, stain the walls, revealing Eagles, and rabbits, and weird faces pulled awry, And hands which fetch and carry things incessantly.

A motor-car cuts a swathe through the bright air, sharp-beaked, irresistible, shouting to the wind to make way.

It’s from an Amy Lowell poem we all loved in college. Wine is sort of thrilling and sensual, and bread is familiar and essential.’ ‘Wine, I suppose.’ ‘Would it have turned to bread?

loved that Amy Lowell poem when I first read it, how her lover was like red wine at the beginning and then became bread.

A Lover" If I could catch the green lantern of the firefly I could see to write you a letter. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse 1912–22. Edited by Harriet Monroe. (Chicago: 1912–22; New York: Bartleby.com, 2011)

Aubade" As I would free the white almond from the green husk So I would strip your trappings off, Beloved. And fingering the smooth and polished kernel I should see that in my hands glittered a gem beyond counting. Decade When you came, you were like red wine and honey, And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness. Now you are like morning bread, Smooth and pleasant. I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour, But I am completely nourished. Amy Lowell