Amy Lowell Among Her Contemporaries by Carl Rollyson

Description

The poet history tried to erase, restored at last. Carl Rollyson’s Amy Lowell Among Her Contemporaries rescues a giant: Lowell (1874–1925), the cigar-smoking, poetry-revolutionizing force who championed imagism, wrote the definitive Keats biography, and was caricatured by lesser men for decades as a footnote in their stories.

Rollyson — the veteran biographer — sets the record straight with essays that place Lowell where she belongs: at the center of modern poetry, not its margins. The Frosts, Pounds, and Lawrences orbit her here, as they should, and her own formidable achievement shines through.

For poetry lovers: the corrective Lowell deserves. Fierce, brilliant, and finally given her due — a major American poet reclaimed. Rollyson’s essays build an unanswerable case: Lowell belongs with the immortals. Poetry readers, take note — a major reputation restored. Lowell the powerhouse, Lowell the pioneer: Rollyson gives her back to American poetry. Long overdue and richly deserved.

For decades, the poet Amy Lowell was caricatured in other people’s biographies — a footnote in the lives of Frost, Pound, and Lawrence. In this engaging collection of essays, biographer Carl Rollyson sets the record straight.

Amy Lowell Among Her Contemporaries (iUniverse, 2010) restores Lowell’s rightful place in the history of American literature. Rollyson, author of several major literary biographies, corrects the distorted and often hostile accounts that appeared in biographies of D.H. Lawrence, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, and other writers who collaborated with her. For the first time, a well-rounded portrait of Lowell emerges: not just the cigar-smoking impresario of modernist poetry, but a serious artist of fierce intelligence and gregarious charm.

With brief but revealing discussions of Lowell’s poetry — including the full texts of several of her most important poems — this is a compelling window into a remarkable life and a pivotal era in American letters. Essential for readers of poetry, biography, and the untold stories of the women who shaped modernism.