Trilogy (New Directions Classic) - Softcover

H.D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811213994 ISBN 13: 9780811213998

Publisher: New Directions, 1998

Synopsis

The classic Trilogy by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961), including 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, "The Walls Do Not Fall," 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 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

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.

Aliki Barnstone’s translations have appeared in American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. An editor and critic, she lives in Las Vegas and teaches at UNLV.

Review:

...But what doesn't need illumination is the similarity (and difference) of Trilogy to Pound's Cantos, 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 scenes 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 practitioners. -- Home News Tribune, 2 March 1999

H.D. spoke of essentials. It is a simplicity not of reduction but of having gone further our of the circle of known light, further toward an unknown center. -- Denise Levertov

The Flowering Of The Rod: 11
The Flowering Of The Rod: 12
The Flowering Of The Rod: 13
The Flowering Of The Rod: 14
The Flowering Of The Rod: 15
The Flowering Of The Rod: 16
The Flowering Of The Rod: 17
The Flowering Of The Rod: 18
The Flowering Of The Rod: 19
The Flowering Of The Rod: 20
The Flowering Of The Rod: 21
The Flowering Of The Rod: 22
The Flowering Of The Rod: 23
The Flowering Of The Rod: 24
The Flowering Of The Rod: 25
The Flowering Of The Rod: 26
The Flowering Of The Rod: 27
The Flowering Of The Rod: 28
The Flowering Of The Rod: 29
The Flowering Of The Rod: 30
The Flowering Of The Rod: 31
The Flowering Of The Rod: 32
The Flowering Of The Rod: 33
The Flowering Of The Rod: 34
The Flowering Of The Rod: 35
The Flowering Of The Rod: 36
The Flowering Of The Rod: 37
The Flowering Of The Rod: 38
The Flowering Of The Rod: 39
The Flowering Of The Rod: 40
The Flowering Of The Rod: 41
The Flowering Of The Rod: 42
The Flowering Of The Rod: 43
Tribute To The Angels: 15
Tribute To The Angels: 21
Tribute To The Angels: 22
Tribute To The Angels: 5
The Walls Do Not Fall: 11
The Walls Do Not Fall: 12
The Walls Do Not Fall: 15
The Walls Do Not Fall: 17
The Walls Do Not Fall: 18
The Walls Do Not Fall: 19
The Walls Do Not Fall: 25
The Walls Do Not Fall: 26
The Walls Do Not Fall: 27
The Walls Do Not Fall: 28
The Walls Do Not Fall: 29
The Walls Do Not Fall: 30
The Walls Do Not Fall: 31
The Walls Do Not Fall: 32
The Walls Do Not Fall: 33
The Walls Do Not Fall: 34
The Walls Do Not Fall: 35
The Walls Do Not Fall: 36
The Walls Do Not Fall: 37
The Walls Do Not Fall: 38
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

[O]ne of the great long poetry sequences of the century, and we should be grateful to New Directions for republishing it with loving attention. -- The Boston Phoenix, August 1998

[T]his ecstasy, ecstasy in language, in beautiful language, is what carries me through the entire trilogy, not only content with her tricks...not only content with these high-handed fictions but enchanted with her whole poem, not to say enraptured. -- Hayden Carruth, The Hudson Review

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0811213994
• ISBN 13: 9780811213998
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 206
• Editor: Barnstone Aliki