A review by kjboldon
Collected Poems 1912-1944 by Hilda Doolittle

challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

4.75

H.D., born Hilda Doolittle in Bethlehem, PA, is a tough poet to track down. Under H? D? Doolittle? I learned about her in Francesca Wade's excellent group bio of women between the wars who lived in Mecklenburg Square. Now I've spent months reading her poems, a few each day. This collected edition ends with a Christmas tale, so I wish I'd read a bit faster. I'm not sure how much I've retained, but I've felt mesmerized and enthralled nonetheless as I've soaked in these poems and their Greek myth influences, as well as her grief at failed male relations, and her fragments of Sappho as she partnered with a woman. She was a contemporary of Ezra Pound and D.H. Lawrence (I wonder when she took on H D and if it was in reaction to his initials.) She was analyzed by Freud who helped her work through a creative block. This chonky volume attests to a continual toil as a poet.