In Memoriam: Hilda Doolittle

To anyone who's ever been made to sit through endless recitations of lyric poetry and thought they might die from it, Hilda Doolittle - who was born on this day in 1886 - will seem like nothing less than a saviour...

Doolittle was one of the first Imagist poets, dispensing with complicated metre and unnecessary verbiage in her work, favouring instead vividly wrought, passionately expressed, but most importantly short poems. Which is not to say she disdained the classics; indeed, much of her work was derived from ancient Greek writing, including Sappho, whose work is entirely lyric.

A notable bohemian, Doolittle (who published extensively as H.D.), had romantic entanglements with both men and women. The most notable of these are Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington, two notable Imagist poets, as well as the novelist Bryher.

While such behaviour may have marginalized her among her contemporaries, in the more enlightened times that followed her September 1961 death H.D.'s work was rediscovered and her reputation has now been entirely rehabilitated.
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