Scan barcode
kjboldon's review
5.0
H.D., born Hilda Doolittle in Bethlehem, PA, is a tough poet to track down. Under H? D? Doolittle? I learned about her in Francesca Wade's excellent group bio of women between the wars who lived in Mecklenburg Square. Now I've spent months reading her poems, a few each day. This collected edition ends with a Christmas tale, so I wish I'd read a bit faster. I'm not sure how much I've retained, but I've felt mesmerized and enthralled nonetheless as I've soaked in these poems and their Greek myth influences, as well as her grief at failed male relations, and her fragments of Sappho as she partnered with a woman. She was a contemporary of Extra Pound and D.H. Lawrence (I wonder when she took on H D and if it was in reaction to his initials.) She was analyzed by Freud who helped her work through a creative block. This chonky volume attests to a continual toil as a poet.
friendsheyho's review
3.0
Don't get me wrong: H.D. is one of my very favorite poets, and there's a lot of fantastic work in here. But books of poetry shouldn't be 600 words long, and no one deserves everything they've ever written to be compiled into one volume, because no one writes only masterpieces. It's exhausting to get to the good stuff because there's just so much work crammed into this book. Whoever did this edition, please, release H.D. from this prison.
More...