Tuesday Poem Blog - 'Shore Grass'

Shore Grass by Amy Lowell

The moon is cold over the sand-dunes,
And the clumps of sea-grasses flow and glitter;
The thin chime of my watch tells the quarter after midnight;
And still I hear nothing
But the windy beating of the sea.

From: Honor Moore, editor, Amy Lowell, Selected Poems, American Poets Project, 2004.

This poem reminds me of Stradbroke Island where we used to spend a week, sometimes two weeks, every Christmas holidays. This was years ago and the island was not top to bottom resort back then. We used to stay at Clayton's Cabins and the generator stopped at 10.00 pm so the lights went out! There was a small general store and surfies, who would frequently camp in the caves on the cliffs to save money, lived on milkshakes and hot chips from the store.

It was a walk along the cliffs to Point Lookout where there was another, slightly larger store. We'd buy iceblocks there and watch the surfies from the clifftop. Once I saw three sharks, quite visible in the clearest water, circling around a surfer. There was nothing one could do from the cliff except watch. He surfed in, but there were stories...

I love beaches at night - the shadows on the sand, the dark, glittering water and the track straight to the horizon made by the moon.

Do have a look at the Tuesday Poem blog this week which features an intriguing section of a longer narrative poem, 'Pen Pal' by Sugar Magnolia Wilson. It's great! I read it and immediately downloaded the pdf. Kudos for Cats and Spaghetti Press, too, for doing something so beautiful and then giving it away. Thanks, too, for Helen Rickerby for posting this - she's this week's Tuesday Poem editor. Sugar Magnolia Wilson's work makes my fingers itchy to write. (And what a wonderful name!)

Tuesday Poem - Interlude by Amy Lowell

Interlude

When I have baked white cakes
And grated green almonds to spread upon them;
When I have picked the green crowns from the strawberries
And piled them, cone-pointed, in a blue and yellow platter;
When I have smoothed the seam of the linen I have been working;
What then?
To-morrow it will be the same:
Cakes and strawberries,
And needles in and out of cloth.
If the sun is beautiful on bricks and pewter,
How much more beautiful is the moon,
Slanting down the gauffered branches of a plum-tree;
The moon,
Wavering across a bed of tulips;
The moon,
Still
Upon your face.
You shine, Beloved,
You and the moon.
But which is the reflection?
The clock is striking eleven.
I think, when we have shut and barred the door,
The night will be dark
Outside.

from, Honor Moore (ed), Amy Lowell, Selected Poems, American Poets Project, 2004.

This is my first Tuesday Poem post for 2015! I've chosen this Lowell poem because of that lovely intersection between the domestic detail and the erotic. I'm also intrigued by the movement in the last part of the poem - does the barring of the door keep the moon/Beloved inside so the private space (domestic and erotic) is bright in contrast to the (sinister) dark night?

Amy Lowell was an Imagist and at the centre of the Imagist controversy. In 1915, in the introduction to her Imagist anthology she attempted to list the hallmarks of this poetry:

1. To use the language of common speech. . . .
2. To create new rhythms. . . .
3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. . . .
4. To present an image. . . .
5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.
6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.

She was the partner of Ada Russell and her poetry boldly declares the eroticism of this relationship, in an era when 'Boston marriages' were common but not sexually explicit. She was a lifelong friend of Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy and D. H. Lawrence and an adversary of Ezra Pound. She was a formidable worker, translating classic Chinese poems and writing a biography of Keats before her untimely death at 51.

Check out the Tuesday Poem blog for this week's featured poem and navigate the menu of Tuesday Poets for other lyrical delights.