Trilogy: The walls do not fall Tribute to the angels The flowering of the rod - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811204901 ISBN 13: 9780811204903

Publisher: New Directions

Synopsis

This reissue of the classic Trilogy, by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961), now includes a new introduction and a large section of referential notes for readers and students, compiled by Professor Aliki Barnstone. As civilian war poetry (written under the shattering impact of World War II), Trilogy's three long poems rank with T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets and Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos. The first book of the Trilogy, published in the midst of the "fifty thousand incidents" of the London blitz, maintains the hope that though "we have no map; / possibly we will reach haven, /heaven." Tribute to the Angels describes new life springing from the ruins, and finally, in The Flowering of the Rod - with its epigram, .".. pause to give/ thanks that we rise again from death and live" - faith in love and resurrection is realized in lyric and strongly Biblical imagery.

About this title

From the Publisher:

HOME NEWS TRIBUNE, March 2, 1999
But what doesn't need illumination is the similarity (and difference) of "Trilogy" to Pound's Cantoa," a collection of more than 100 poems begun in 1917 and written over 40 years of that poet's life. In them, classical and Renaissance literary scences and figures are combined with American and European history and Oriental thought that strain the knowledge of even the most well-read person. Yet, where Pound showed the love for a woman to be the cause of man's wars, H.D. elevated the female to the persona of "the Lady," a nurturing combination of early earth goddesses and the many Marys mentioned in the New Testament. The image of this "new Eve" is in sharp, clear and restorative contrast to the negative qualities of Pound's mythological Helen of Troy or the very real rain of German bombs onto London in 1944 when H.D. wrote "Trilogy". In some ways, those two words-"the lady"-are the ultimate triumph over language that has been stripped to its purest, most evocative form by one of poetry's premiere practioners: "H.D., Imagiste

About the Author:

H.D. (1886-1961) (the pen name of Hilda Doolittle) was born in the Moravian community of Bethlehem, PA in 1886. A major twentieth century poet with "an ear more subtle than Pound's, Moore's, or Yeats's" as Marie Ponsot writes, she was the author of several volumes of poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs. She is perhaps one of the best-known and prolific women poets of the Modernist era. Bryher Ellerman was a novelist and H.D.'s wealthy companion. She financed H.D.'s therapy with Freud.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• ISBN 10: 0811204901
• ISBN 13: 9780811204903
• Binding: Hardcover