A Dark Sense: H.D. in Comparison to Others in “Some Imagist Poets”

H.D. looking sad as I would imagine her looking as she contemplated the abandonment of mankind.

H. D., renowned female imagist poet, was once featured in literary magazine Some Imagist Anthology’s special editions of Some Imagist Poets in 1917. There she stood against big time imagists like Amy Lowell, Richard Aldington, and D.H. Lawrence; each of them trying to produce the most modern and realist images through their poetry. However, I’m taking the time here to defend H.D.’s work in comparison to the others published in this edition. What is special about this edition of the magazine is not only that it published famous and still canonized imagist poets, but also had an underlying thread of thematic purpose that strung each of the poets together. This purpose, although difficult to put to words, deals specifically with the sociological, mental, and emotional effects that World War I had left on the western world. Each of the poems in this edition speak directly to the emptiness and misdirection that violence and loss can take upon a person. H.D., however, presents something further than the emptiness; she not only introduces a voice of loss, but a dark sense of abandonment in specific images that the other poems don’t seem to possess.  However, what I found particularly interesting about her publication in this edition is the fact that merely four of her poems were published as opposed to seven or more as the other poets had achieved. I’m taking into consideration many reasons for this: perhaps she didn’t submit many or perhaps they didn’t want to publish much of her poems. However, what is inconsiderable is the idea that her poems were not powerful enough to be published. Each of the four poems published in this edition–“Sea Gods”, “The Shrine”, “Temple–The Cliff”, and “Mid-day”–stand on their own as islands of raw imagination and powerful metaphor. She occupies the idea of abandonment using the image of a ship wrecked at sea or a flower isolated in rocks. H.D. presents the idea of abandonment of connection between humans and, and the ever-present urge to find a middle ground on earth.