Noted modernist and imagist Amy Lawrence Lowell was a consummate lecturer and conversationalist, as well as a joker and friend-maker among the great literary figures of her day. She enhanced her promotion of imagism as a viable alternative to traditional forms with the composition of over 600 poems. The sheer volume of verse mars her canon by the inclusion of mediocre works among such masterpieces as "Patterns" and "The Sisters," a defense of female artistry. Until feminist criticism defended her place among early-twentieth-century poets, she was largely neglected, in part because homophobic critics rejected her bisexual and lesbian views on human relationships.
Amy Lowell was one of the prestigious Massachusetts Lowells and was a relative of James Russell Lowell, the first editor of Atlantic Monthly. She was born on February 9, 1874, in Brookline to aristocratic parents, Katherine Bigelow Lawrence and Augustus Lowell. Lowell's mother tutored and educated her, and she completed a basic education at private schools in Boston and Brookline. Much of her learning derived from self-directed reading in the family's vast library. At age 13, to aid a charity, she published a volume of juvenilia, Dream Drops, or Stories from Fairyland (1887), a token of the late-blooming artistry yet to emerge.
