Boston in poetry

by The 100 Companies May 3, 2023

May 3, 2023

Lowell, whose brother Abbott was president of Harvard, never attended college (as it was not proper for a young woman to do so). Instead, she became an avid reader and obsessive book collector — penning poems in her spare time. She was 36 years old when her first poem, “Fixed Idea,” was published in The Atlantic. Her first volume of poetry was published in 1912, just a dozen years before her death. (Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

Poet Amy Lowell (1874-1925) paid homage to Boston in a pair of notable poems — both penned in nearby Brookline where she was born and raised.

“Cross-hatchings of rain” (during an April deluge, no doubt!) permeate “Afternoon Rain in State Street” and capture the “wet stone sides of buildings” Lowell likely encountered there. Her second, entirely apropos, is an ode to books — “the life/The very heart and core of ages past/The reason why men lived and worked and died/The essence and quintessence of their lives” — and, by extension, “The Boston Athenaeum” where she spent (by her own admission) countless hours. Sigh.

– Hannah Van Sickle, The 100 Companies

Boston in poetry

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