Lesbian Poet Herstory

Lesbian Poet Herstory Page Manager:

Trish Shields
bard@subee.com

Please contact Trish
with your questions or suggestions for
this section.

Elsa Gidlow

Audre Lorde


  Under the able direction of poet/novelist Trish Shields,
these pages of Just About Write will introduce Lesbian poets from
the past,  a little about their herstories, and a sampling of their works.
These women were pioneers, and they left a remarkable legacy for
us all. We urge you to take the time to learn something about them
and their lasting impressions of life, love, and the world around us.

Hilda Doolittle
1886-1961

Hilda Doolittle was born on September 10, 1886, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She was one of six children and the only daughter. Her father was a professor at Pennsylvania University, teaching both math and astronomy. Because of the era, her mother was deferential to her father in all things, and it's obvious that Hilda felt she couldn't measure up to her father and was in fact a disappointment to both her parents.

She was engaged to Ezra Pound, whom she met in 1901, much to her parents' dismay. Pound was considered an upstart wannabe poet, who eschewed the great poets and their poetic style. His influence on her style of poetry was immediate. She wrote under the moniker, H.D., in a sparse, direct style, obeying the 'masculine' credos of pulling away from Victorian, "feminine" writing. It was Pound who introduced Hilda to London's literary avant-garde as an up and coming imagist. Imagists hold to three principles: direct treatment of a subject, allowing no word not essential to the presentation, and using the musical phrase rather than strict rhythms and rhyme. Pound continued on as an imagist for the rest of his writing career while Hilda broke completely with it, writing, "Trilogy." Part 1 of this collection, written in 1942, deals with worldwide aggression, Part 2 deals with the calm period just prior to D Day, and the last part, Part 3, written in 1944, deals with the hope of civilization. With the publication of "Trilogy" Hilda moved from writing lyric poetry to becoming an epic poet, guaranteeing her place as mystical and cultural spokesperson for that time period.

She and Pound shared another interest, Frances Josepha Gregg. A romantic triangle began in 1910 and ended shortly thereafter, with Hilda, Gregg and Gregg's mother, leaving for Europe where Hilda began a serious career as a writer. Her relationship with Frances cooled and Hilda went on to meet and possibly have an affair with Brigit Patmore. Brigit in turn introduced Hilda to Richard Aldington, a freelance writer and poet. They were married in 1912 but divorced six years later after accusations of adultery and the still-birth of their only child in 1915. On the rebound, she had a brief relationship with Cecil Gray, a musicologist, with whom she had a child, Frances Perdita.

Hilda had studied Greek literature at Bryn Mawr College and published some translations along with her collection of poetry, Sea Garden, in 1916.

Annie Winifred Ellerman was taken with both the poet and her poetry, and she and Hilda met and began a lifelong love affair and partnership. They lived, worked, traveled together and corresponded closely when they were apart. Ellerman helped create McAlmon's Press, helping to publish such names as Ernest Hemmingway, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and Djuna Barnes among others. Although Ellerman
married twice to appease her extremely wealthy family, and Hilda had a number of love affairs, their relationship to each other was both deep and committed. Their romantic relationship was a secret and they were known in public as cousins. Although Annie, also known as Bryer, believed that she was a male born with the wrong genital parts, Hilda held no such beliefs, believing rather that women loving other women did so simply because they chose to. Her sexual identity was the main topic found in her prose, which was almost solely autobiographical.

Hilda never returned to America to live for any length of time, preferring to live in either Switzerland or England. After being a prolific and respected writer, she suffered a stroke and died in 1961.

Her work celebrated the romance and love between women. Although her mostly autobiographical prose centered on her erotic attachments, they were not published until after her death.

H.D., Hilda Doolittle, wrote three novels during her lifetime: Paint It Today (1921), Asphodel (1921-1922), and HERmione (1926-1927). You can find more on Hilda Doolittle, her literary works and poetry here:

http://www.imagists.org/hd/basic.html
http://college.hmco.com/english/heath/syllabuild/iguide/doolittl.html
http://www.cichone.com/jlc/hd/hdpoet.html
http://www.poemhunter.com/hilda-doolittle/poet-6677/
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hd/hd.htm

Sea Poppies

Amber husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
marked with a rich grain,
treasure
spilled near the shrub-pines
to bleach on the boulders:

your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conch-shells.

Beautiful, wide-spread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?

—Hilda Doolittle

At Baia

I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."

Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff—
ah, ah, how was it

You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous—perilous—
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:

"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"

or

"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."

—Hilda Doolittle
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