Modernist Women Poets An Anthology Copyright © 2014 by Robert Hass and Paul Ebenkamp All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Modernist Women Poets : an anthology / edited by Robert Hass, Paul Ebenkamp. pages cm 1. American poetry—Women authors. 2. American poetry—20th century. 3. Modernism (Literature) 4. Women—United States--poetry. I. Hass, Robert, editor of compilation. II. Ebenkamp, Paul, editor of compilation. PS589.M53 2014 811’.50809287—dc23 2013047445 ISBN 978-1-61902-382-6 Cover and interior design by Gopa & Ted2, Inc. Counterpoint Press 1919 Fifth Street Berkeley, CA 94710 www.counterpointpress.com Distributed by Publishers Group West 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents PREFACE BY C.D. WRIGHT LOLA RIDGE from The Ghetto Flotsam Death Ray The Fifth-Floor Window Appulse GERTRUDE STEIN from Tender Buttons: Objects from Tender Buttons: Roastbeef Susie Asado Yet Dish Idem The Same: A Valentine To Sherwood Anderson from Lifting Belly If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso from Stanzas in Meditation AMY LOWELL The Pike Patterns Thompson’s Lunch Room—Grand Central Station Spring Longing Venus Transiens Bright Sunlight New Heavens for Old Dissonance ELSA VON FREYTAG-LORINGHOVEN Analytical Chemistry of Progeny A Dozen Cocktails Please Subjoyride Ostentatious Ohio—Indiansummer All’s Well Ultramundanity Constitution Game Legend FLORENCE WHEELOCK AYSCOUGH AND AMY LOWELL from Fir-Flower Tablets Autumn River Song: On the Broad Reach The Heaven’s Gate Mountains The Retreat of Hsieh Kung On the Subject of Old Tai’s Wine-Shop In The Province of Lu, to the East of the Stone Gate Mountain, Taking Leave of Tu Fu At the Edge Of Heaven, Thinking of Li Po ADELAIDE CRAPSEY November Night Release Triad Snow Anguish Trapped Moon-Shadows Languor After Pain The Guarded Wound Night Winds Arbutus “He’s killed the may and he’s laid her by To bear the red rose company.” Amaze The Warning Saying Of Il Haboul, Guardian Of The Treasure Of Solomon And Keeper Of The Prophet’s Armor Laurel in The Berkshires Niagara—Seen on a Night in November On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees Fragment ANGELINA WELD GRIMKE Grass Fingers Tenebris A Mona Lisa The Black Finger Under The Days ANNE SPENCER At the Carnival Lines to a Nasturtium Translation MINA LOY Songs to Joannes Poe Lunar Baedeker Der Blinde Junge Brancusi’s Golden Bird FRANCES GREGG To H.D. HAZEL HALL Seams Two Sewing The Listening Macaws Footfalls Woman Death Riddle The Unuttered H.D. Sea Rose Sea Lily Garden Sea Violet Orchard Storm Hermes of the Ways For Bryher and Perdita Hymen Song Helen Fragment Forty Fragment Forty-one Fragment Sixty-eight Lethe Christmas 1944 from The Walls Do Not Fall MARIANNE MOORE The Past Is The Present Those Various Scalpels, The Fish Marriage An Octopus The Steeple-Jack In Distrust Of Merits DJUNA BARNES Portrait of a Lady Walking The Walking-Mort Seen from the ‘L’ Suicide Quarry Dereliction As Cried Verse HILDEGARDE FLANNER Moment Fern Song True Western Summer LAURA RIDING Named Summons Incarnations So Slight Take Hands The Quids The Rugged Black of Anger The Map of Places O Vocables of Love Come, Words, Away AFTERWORD BY ROBERT HASS APPENDIX Marianne Moore: Excerpts from Selected Letters and Complete Prose H. D.: Egoist Review of Moore