"September, 1918"

Poem

By: Amy Lowell

Date: 1919

Source: Lowell, Amy. "September, 1918." In Pictures of the Floating World. New York: Macmillan, 1919. Reprinted in The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955.

About the Author: Amy Lowell (1874–1925) was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, into a wealthy, old New England family. Her predecessors founded two Massachusetts cities, Lowell and Lawrence. Her famous brother, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, was the president of Harvard, and the poet Robert Lowell was a distant cousin. Amy Lowell lived her entire life on a ten-acre estate called Sevenels. She was encouraged to write from a young age and was tutored by governesses and sent to private schools. As an adult, Lowell was known for her outspokeness and her unconventional lifestyle. A leading member of the Imagist school of poetry, she published nine volumes of verse. She was also a noted critic, biographer (of John Keats), reviewer, and spokeswoman for modern poetry. Her volume What O'Clock was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1926, the year after she died.

Often controversial, Amy Lowell considered herself a "self-appointed prophet for American poetry." She felt it was her job to inform the American public about poetic verse and to improve its taste in poetry. After reading a poem by H.D. (the pen name of Hilda Doolittle) in a 1913 issue of Poetry magazine, Lowell became interested in the Imagist movement. She traveled to London to meet Ezra Pound, H.D., Richard Aldington, and others in the Imagist school. Lowell embraced the Imagist approach in her own poetry and promoted the movement in America.

Imagism relied on succinct verse and precise visual images. Lowell called it "poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred or indefinite." In her introduction to an anthology of Imagist poetry, Lowell exhorted poets to "use the language of common speech, but to employ the exact word, not the nearly exact, nor the merely decorative word."

Lowell is not remembered as a great poet, but she did experiment with innovative forms. She frequently wrote in vers libre, or free verse, which is poetry that does not follow a strict metrical pattern. And she was the first English-speaking poet to employ polyphonic prose in her poetry. This is rhythmical prose that employs poetic devices, but not the strict meter of poetry.

Amy Lowell was established as an Imagist by the time she published Pictures of the Floating World in 1919. Critic Louis Untermeyer has described the volume as Lowell's "most personal revelation." The poem "September, 1918" appears in a section of Pictures of the Floating World titled "Dreams in War Time."

"September, 1918" is a good example of an Imagist poem. It uses common language, and it presents a clear image that lets the reader experience the scene. What can Page 52  |  Top of Article
American poet Amy Lowell. HISTORICAL PICTURES SERVICES. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION. be perceived through the senses is important in this and other poems in Pictures of the Floating World. The first line of "September, 1918" helps the reader visualize the colors in the air and water. Sound also becomes important: The houses laugh. Taste—the sweetness of memory—enters in the second stanza. This aesthetic quality is one of the strengths of Lowell's poetry.

World War I also had a major impact on Lowell's work. Many of her poems explore how the war affected everyone. In "September, 1918," she reflects on the simplicity and beauty of life that is overwhelmed by the destructive presence of war.