Hilda Doolittle was born September 10, 1886, at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. When she was still a child, her father became Director of the Flower Observatory and the family moved to a suburb in the outskirts of Philadelphia. Hilda Doolittle attended a private school in West Philadelphia; entered Bryn Mawr College in 1904 and went abroad, for what was intended to be a short sojourn, in 1911. After a visit to Italy and France, she came to London, joining Ezra Pound and helping to organize the Imagists. Her work (signed H. D.) began to appear in a few magazines and its unusual quality was recognized at once. Her first volume, Sea Garden, appeared in 1916; her second, Hymen, an amplification of her gift, was published in 1921. H. D. is, by all odds, the most important of her group. She is the only one who has steadfastly held to the letter as well as to the spirit of its credo. She is, in fact, the only true Imagist. Her poems, capturing the firm delicacy of the Greek models, are like a set of Tanagra figurines. Here, at first glance, the effect is chilling - beauty seems held in a frozen gesture. But it is in this very fixation of light, color and emotion that she achieves intensity. Observe the tiny poem entitled "Heat." Here, in the fewest possible words, is something beyond the description of heat here is the effect of it. In these lines one feels the very weight and solidity of a midsummer afternoon. Heliodora (1924) and the exquisite new work in Collected Poems (1925) must convince even a casual reader that no more finished craftsman and no more sensitized artist exists in H. D.'s generation. Where is the bird of fire? what magic lurks within. Bird, bird, bird, bird, we cry, only night heals again, only night heals again. WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT William Rose Benét was born at Fort Hamilton, New York Harbor, February 2, 1886. He was educated at Albany Academy and graduated from Yale in 1907. After various experiences as freelance writer, publisher's reader, second lieutenant, etc., Benét became the Associate Editor of the New York Post's "Literary Review" in 1920, resigning in 1923 to become one of the editors of The Saturday Review of Literature. The outstanding feature of Benét's verse is its extraordinary whimsicality; an oriental imagination riots through his pages. Like the title-poem of his first volume, Merchants from Cathay (1913), all of Benét's volumes vibrate with a vigorous music; they are full of the sonorous stuff that one rolls out crossing wintry fields or tramping a road alone. But Benét's charm is not confined to the lift and swing of rollicking choruses. His The Falconer of God (1914), The Great White Wall (1916) and The Burglar of the Zodiac (1918) contain decorations as bold as they are brilliant; they ring with a strange and spicy music evoked from seemingly casual words. Moons of Grandeur (1920) represents the fullest development of Benét's unusual gifts, a combination of Eastern phantasy and Western vigor. The best of Benét's previous volumes as well as a group of new poems were selected for Man Possessed (1927), a volume that, in cumulative detail, reveals a most colorful versatility. How that Of their And their With its And Chorus. MERCHANTS FROM CATHAY Their heels slapped their bumping mules; their fat chaps glowed. Glory unto Mary, each seemed to wear a crown! Like sunset their robes were on the wide, white road: So we saw those mad merchants come dusting into town! Two paunchy beasts they rode on and two they drove before. May the Saints all help us, the tiger-stripes they had! And the panniers upon them swelled full of stuffs and ore! The square buzzed and jostled at a sight so mad. They bawled in their beards, and their turbans they wried. They stopped by the stalls with curvetting and clatter. As bronze as the bracken their necks and faces dyed And a stave they sat singing, to tell us of the matter. For your silks to Sugarmago! For your dyes to Isfahan! Weird fruits from the Isle o' Lamaree. But for magic merchandise, for treasuretrove and spice, "Here's a catch and a carol to the great, grand Chan, The King of all the Kings across the sea! "Here's a catch and a carol to the great, grand Chan; For we won through the deserts to his sunset barbican; And the mountains of his palace no Titan's reach may span A first 66 And a second Right hard To stomach And a third, We gape to Where he wields his seignorie! Red-as-blood skins of Panthers, so bright against the sun On the walls of the halls where his pillared state is set They daze with the blaze no man may look upon. And with conduits of beverage those floors run wet. "His wives stiff with riches, they sit before him there. Bird and beast at his feast make song and clapping cheer. And jugglers and enchanters, all walking on the air, Make fall eclipse and thunder - make moons and suns appear! "Once the Chan, by his enemies sore-prest, and sorely spent, Lay, so they say, in a thicket 'neath a tree Where the howl of an owl vexed his foes from their intent: Then that fowl for a holy bird of reverence made he! "A catch and a carol to the great, grand And crowns he gave us! We end where we |