She Marched to Her Own Drummer!

Good morning! I hope you have had a great week. Winter is settling in here. I am hearing from folks that the hay is in; the wood is stacked, protected and ready, and so are they. I guess I am too. I love the change of seasons but am sad to see fall moving along so quickly!

It’s clear that I have a great fondness for strong, intelligent, rebellious women. Women who refuse to be put into boxes or ruled by the patriarchy. Women who think for themselves. One of my very favorites is Amy Lowell. Perhaps because she was all of those things and I grew up knowing her because we were both born in Boston, although she was born much earlier than I, and I grew up admiring her. She physically reminded me greatly of my also intelligent and spirited And May. They could have passed for sisters. 

Join me in celebrating this truly memorable woman. 

Amy Lawrence Lowell was born on February 9, 1874, in Boston, Massachusetts. She was part of an auspicious Brahmin family. The Boston Brahmins, or Boston elite, are members of Boston’s historic upper class); her father was Augustus Lowell and her mother was Katherine Bigelow Lowell. Her siblings include Percival Lowell, the astronomer, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, the educator and legal scholar, later president of Harvard, and Elizabeth Lowell Putnam, an early and avid activist for Prenatal care. Clearly a family of thinkers and movers and shakers. 

Her early school years were disastrous for Amy. She had very low self esteem, considered herself ugly, and was a social outcast. Her classmates did not know how to deal with her, as she was extremely outspoken and opinionated. Her goal at fifteen was certain she wanted to be a photographer, poet, and automobile racer. 

Despite being of the Boston Brahmin’s, or perhaps because of it, Amy never attended college as her family did not consider it “proper” for a woman to seek further education. Her way of coping was to become an avid reader and obsessive collector of books. If no one else could do it, she began a diligent process of educating herself inside the seven thousand-volume library at Sevenels, the ten acre Lowell family seat in Brookline where she would also live as an adult. Amy lived as a socialite and traveled widely. At the age of twenty-eight, after being in the audience for a performance of Eleonora Duse (an Italian actress, rated by many as the greatest of her time) in Europe, she began her career as a poet.  

Amy Lowell was a poet, performer, editor, and translator who devoted her life to modern poetry. “God made me a business woman, and I made myself a poet” she said. In her career, she wrote and published over 650 poems in eleven volumes and scholars credit her for awaken American readers to contemporary trends in poetry. Amy Lowell was not afraid to be herself, a flamboyant woman whose behavior certainly did not reflect her proper and prestigious New England family. She flouted convention wherever she could and her poetry was porto-feminist. Amy was a vivacious and outspoken businesswoman, who clearly excited controversy. 

 Amy’s life partner and lover, Ada Dwyer Russell, was the subject of many of Lowell’s romantic poems. Most of the private correspondence between the two was destroyed by Ada at Lowell’s request. Therefore, much is unknown about the private details of their life together. 

Amy was unabashedly herself and many said politically incorrect. She drove an automobile (of which she still had dreams of racing) and smoked cigars in public. A favorite story is while driving that automobile to visit her brother, who was now president of Harvard. Her auto broke down just a mile or so away. Help arrived, and she advised them she didn’t have any money to cover repairs. The gentleman said something to the effect, “well what would you have me do? You can’t leave the auto here. It’s blocking traffic.” With that, she strode calmly over to a nearby stone wall, sat down, and lit up a cigar. She waved the comment off with one of her own that went something like this, “Well, for heaven’s sake, go ask my brother Abbott to help us out, (gesturing toward the school) he’s the president of Harvard after all.” The gentleman proceeded to her brother’s office at Harvard, hat in hand, and explained the situation ending with…”and she says she is your sister.” Abbott reportedly rolled his eyes, signed deeply, and said "describe her to me." The gentleman proceeded to say she was a hefty woman, sitting on a stonewall, smoking a cigar. Again, Abbott sighed, shook his head, rubbed his temples, and acknowledged, “Yes, that is her.”  

Post World War, people forgot about Amy Lowell, but during the women’s movement in the 1970s and the increasing numbers of women’s studies courses being offered at institutions of higher learning, she once again gained recognition. Amy drew inspiration from her female poet predecessors. In several of her works, she expresses her thoughts and feelings on Sappho, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson. 

Amy Lowell received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry posthumously in 1926. We can’t forget this indomitable woman. She has been an inspiration for many, male and female, and her legacy lives on.