Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

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Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914) is a poetry collection by Amy Lowell. Published at the beginning of her career as an influential imagist devoted to classical poetic themes and forms, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed is an agile and promising work from a pioneering poet of the early twentieth century. The title poem of Lowells collection is an imaginative voyage into the mind of a poet struggling with writers block, who scans the city for the slightest tinge of gold to no avail: From time to time I wrote a word / Which lines and circles overscored. / My table seemed a graveyard, full / Of coffins waiting burial. Disgusted with her inability to write anything meaningful, she takes the streets, encountering a strange old manpart poppy dealer, part devilwho offers success in exchange for the poets soul. Personal and public, keenly engaged with traditionthe Faustian legend, in particularwhile maintaining her own private voice, Lowells poems are an essential contribution to one of humanitys oldest art forms. Sword Blades and Poppy Seed is a vibrant collection from an emerging poet who would come to define the imagist movement throughout her storied career. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition Amy Lowells Sword Blades and Poppy Seed is a classic work of American poetry reimagined for modern readers.

Author Bio

Amy Lowell (1874-1925) was an American poet. Born into an elite family of businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals, Lowell was a member of the so-called Boston Brahmin class. She excelled in school from a young age and developed a habit for reading and book collecting. Denied the opportunity to attend college by her family, Lowell traveled extensively in her twenties and turned to poetry in 1902. While in England with her lover Ada Dwyer Russell, she met American poet Ezra Pound, whose influence as an imagist and fierce critic of Lowells work would prove essential to her poetry. In 1912, only two years after publishing her first poem in The Atlantic Monthly, Lowell produced A Dome of Many-Coloured Glasses, her debut volume of poems. In addition to such collections of her own poems as Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914) and Men, Women, and Ghosts (1916), Lowell published translations of 8th century Chinese poet Li Tai-po and, at the time of her death, had been working on a biography of English Romantic John Keats.