SEA GARDEN
London: Constable & Co. Ltd., 1916. First Edition. Paperback. Small 8vo. [i-iv] v, 47 pp. Plain printed red jacket pasted onto cards. The New Poetry Series. Small amount of dust spotting on head. Darkened spine with some creasing; tail of spine slightly worn. Clean and tight interior. Easily very good. A truly remarkable example of this important book. H.D. is best known as one of the key poets of the Imagist movement of the early 20th century, which boasted associates Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams, and Ezra Pound, among others. In addition to poetry, she also wrote essays, fiction, memoirs, and even translated Greek plays, and as a modernist her work is not only varied, but complex. She wrote as an American expat in France, England, Italy, and many other locations during the turbulent decades beginning just before World War I and spanning all the way through the decade following World War II. While often discussed in terms of her relationship with Ezra Pound, her marriage to Richard Aldington, and her relationships with women, luckily, with only light digging, one can uncover more substantial scholarly analysis of her work. Much of it convincingly demonstrates her importance, not just as an Imagist, but as an American poet more generally. Her poetry influenced new generations of female poets, and perhaps most famously, the Black Mountain and San Francisco Renaissance poet, Robert Duncan. Sea Garden, H.D.’s first book, is a collection of Imagist poems with titles such as "Sea Rose," "Sea Lily," "Sea Poppies," "Garden," and "Pear Tree," rooting the reader firmly in the natural world of sand, wind, rocks, beaches, leaves, and petals. Each of the 28 poems engages the senses, offering a distinct sound, smell, texture, or clear image. As one scholar wrote, “If there is such a thing as an Imagist poetics, then, we can define it, I would argue, only by starting with H.D.’s work, and asking ourselves what makes it revolutionary…” (Burton Hatlen, “The Imagist Poetics of H.D.’s ‘Sea Garden,’” Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, Fall/Winter 1995, Vol. 24, No. 2/3, p. 109). Very good. Item #16074
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