Blurbs and Justifications: The Poems of H.D

Blurb: O be swift: Poems of H.D

WHIRL up, sea —

Whirl your pointed pines,

Splash your great pines

On our rocks,

Hurl your green over us,

Cover us with your pools of fir.

This definitive anthology presents the poetry of Hilda Doolittle in chronological order. From the Imagism of Sea Garden to the mythic complexity of Trilogy and beyond. This collection mirrors Hilda Doolittle’s everchanging engagement with modernism to feminism to war to mysticism. With critical annotation and contextual commentary, this anthology invites you to join in the constant search for a new form of feminist expression.

A poet ahead of her time, H.D reshaped literary traditions while forging her artistic identity. This edition reclaims H. D’s voice, moving beyond the pen name imposed by Ezra Pound to recognise the full depth of her literary contributions. You can truly see a visionary poet whose work continues to challenge and inspire.

Justification #1: O be swift: Poems of H.D

The target audience for this anthology is a female literary enthusiast, late 30s- 40s, who would not only know Hilda Doolittle’s work but wants to recognise her as more than just the Imagist poet H.D. with ties to Ezra Pound.  My hope is that it particularly appeals to a generation of readers who have witnessed the reassessment of Ezra Pound and his horrific politics and wants to engage with ‘modernism’s feminist potential [Hughes, P.376]. In Gertude Hughes’ Making It Really New: Hilda Doolittle, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Feminist Potential of Modem Poetry, she states that the use of ‘conservative and often misogynistic modernism of Pound … turned out to have surprisingly liberating uses’ [P.376] for H.D. Using this, the edition will stand as a ‘liberating’ work for H.D and all who read her. My reader would want to move away from the ‘masculinist bias of modernism [Hughes, P. 375] and is eager to engage with Hilda Doolittle’s work on her own terms. Furthermore, as a literary enthusiast, she is more likely to identify as a feminist and therefore be aware of scholarship in reclaiming women’s voices.

To reflect this, I chose empowering, strong vocabulary. The authoritative use of ‘definitive’ states to the reader that this should be the only H.D anthology needed, furthermore, the entitizing use of ‘critical annotation and contextual commentary’ will pander to a literary enthusiast such as my reader. As she is a H.D fan, I chose the famous poem ‘The Helmsman’ as the anthology’s title to relay a sense of relatability, this is the same reaction I hope to achieve with the mention of Sea Garden and Trilogy.  I wanted to call back previous work to create a sense of comfortability, that this is the H.D. my consumer knows

I wanted to include Oread (1912) at the top of the blurb, this is inspired by The Fat Black Women’s Poem’s, Plath’s Ariel, and a collection of Dickinson’s poems, I found (see appendix A, B, C) where there is always a small stanza of their work on their blurb before a section about the poet and the collection. Here, I focused on only collections of female poets given the likely feminist approach of my intended reader. ‘Oread’ is one of Doolittle’s earliest and most celebrated poems and using this starts the chronological anthology without even having to open the book.

Bibliography and Appendix (not included in the word count)

For the life and history of Hilda Doolittle: Accessed on 11/02/2025 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/h-d

For the politics of Ezra Pound: Kindley, E. The Insanity of Defense, Coming to Terms with Ezra Pounds Politics, The Nation, April 23, 2018. Accessed on 11/02/2025 https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/coming-to-terms-with-ezra-pounds-politics/

Hughes, G.R, Making it Really New: Hilda Doolittle, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Feminist Potential of Modern Poetry, American Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 3, September 1990,