In 1924, H. D. ventured into minimalism with "Oread," a six-line practice piece that profits from compulsive word associations. The poem overlays a description of an evergreen forest with the shapes, color, sound, and motion of the sea. In giving life to the Greek nymph of mountains and forests, the poet draws on geometric shapes of points, whorls, and rounded pools to end on a pun, "fir," which suggests a furry pelt covering the land. The skillful blending of glimpses, like impressionist art, relies on minute sense impressions to dazzle the eye and mind with potent connections.
By 1916, H. D. was wrestling with issues of feminism and artistic worth that dominated her later writings. In "Sea Rose," she contrasts the stereotypical long-stemmed beauty, emblem of idealized womanhood, with its homelier alter ego, the stunted blossom flung onto the shore. Having weathered the buffeting of tide and wind, it travels at the whim of nature. In the last of the sixteen-line poem, the poet proposes a paradox: how the spicy scent of the stereotyped rose fails in comparison with the bitter aroma of a blossom hardened by experience.
In 1924, a more mature poet produced "Helen." In three five-line stanzas (cinquains) linked by pure rhyme (stands, hands), sight rhyme (words that share elements of spelling but not pronunciation, such as unmoved and love), and assonance (feet, knees), she epitomizes the love-hate relationship between the famed Spartan queen and Greece, the nation she betrayed by eloping with a Trojan prince and triggering a twenty-year war. To move beneath historical details, the poet first characterizes the impeccable complexion with two evocative sight images — lustrous olives and whiteness, a suggestion of opposites — meant to symbolize bloodless cruelty and innocence.
