Pictures of the Floating World
Published seven years after her debut collection A Dome of Many-Coloured Glasses, Pictures of the Floating World (1919), is another dazzling volume of poetry from the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Amy Lowell.
Divided into two sections; Pictures of the Floating World finds inspiration from both Japanese and Chinese poetry, with Lowell trying her hand at the hokku and Chinoiserie. In poems like "Reflections" and "Falling Snow," Lowell paints delicate pictures of experiencing nature, with stanzas such as, "When I looked into your eyes / I saw a garden / With peonies, and tinkling pagodas / And round-arched bridges," and, "The snow whispers about me / And my wooden clogs / Leave holes behind me in the snow / But no one will pass this way." And in the second section, "Planes of Personality," Lowell treads familiar ground with over a dozen lyrical poems, written just after the publication of her second collection, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed and up to April 1919.
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Amy Lowell (1874-1925) was an American poet. Born into an elite family of businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals, Lowell was a member of the so-called Boston Brahmin class. She excelled in school from a young age and developed a habit for reading and book collecting. Denied the opportunity to attend college by her family, Lowell traveled extensively in her twenties and turned to poetry in 1902. While in England with her lover Ada Dwyer Russell, she met American poet Ezra Pound, whose influence as an imagist and fierce critic of Lowell's work would prove essential to her poetry. In 1912, only two years after publishing her first poem in The Atlantic Monthly, Lowell produced A Dome of Many-Coloured Glasses, her debut volume of poems. In addition to such collections of her own poems as Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914) and Men, Women, and Ghosts (1916), Lowell published translations of 8th century Chinese poet Li Tai-po and, at the time of her death, had been working on a biography of English Romantic John Keats.
The Voice of a People: Speeches from Black America is a collection of historical speeches by some of the nation's leading black intellectuals, activists, artists, and organizers. Featuring such orators as Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, and W. E. B. Du Bois, the collection reflects their leadership on issues ranging from abolition to lynching, women's suffrage, black nationalism, and labor organizing. In transmitting the public medium of speech to the page, The Voice of a People: Speeches from Black America endeavors to provide proper historical context and relevant biographical information for each orator and their work. By keeping their words alive, we not only honor the sacrifices of leaders who paved the way for African Americans today, but ensure their work will continue to contribute towards a better future for all.
