T. S. Eliot described Amy Lowell as a "demon saleswoman of poetry." Carl Sandburg remarked on her forceful presence, as follows: "To argue with her is like arguing with a big blue wave." Robert Frost wrote in a tribute that she "helped to make it stirring times for a decade to those immediately concerned with art and to many not so immediately." Ezra Pound went to war with her over which of them would define the poetry movement called Imagism, which he himself founded. And she won. Pound renamed his movement Vorticism.

In the early years of the 20th century, Amy Lowell was, as the saying goes, a "force to be reckoned with," when it came to poetry. And her poems still ring with the beauty, dignity, truth, and the perfect imagery for which she is still famous.

Lowell was a child of wealthy, Boston aristocrats. Her father, Augustus Lowell, was a businessman, civic leader, and horticulturalist. Her mother, Katherine Lowell, was an accomplished musician and linguist. In case you are wondering, the great abolitionist poet James Russell Lowell was a first cousin. Her elaborate debut, during which she was described as "the most popular debutante of the season," failed, producing not a husband but a proposal from a young man that was later withdrawn. The heartbreak resulting from this incident led to a trip to Egypt, which doubled as a possible cure for obesity, which also didn't work.

Forceful, intelligent, exceedingly well-read, and well-traveled, Ms. Lowell discovered in 1902, to the lasting delight of poetry lovers up until this very day, that she had a great talent for poetry. Ten years later she met and formed what was then called a "Boston marriage" with an actress named Ada Dwyer Russell, to whom, according to her Ms. Lowell's biographer, poetry lovers owe a debt of gratitude for providing a "steadying, supporting presence" during Ms. Lowell's most creative years, from 1914 to 1925.

The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English notes that her "idiosyncratic masculine appearance and her vigorous sponsorship of modern poetry" invested her "with almost legendary status within the American poetic tradition." I would not argue with that observation - the experts knowing much more than I -- but would add the additional thought that her poetry alone, as evidenced by the following two examples, earned her a well deserved honored place in the hearts of poetry lovers everywhere. We will return to her work again in these pages.