H.D.

Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States – September 27, 1961, Zürich, Switzerland), usually known only by her initials H.D., was an American poet, novelist and memoirist.

Quotes

• For one moment seek
  a lesser beauty
  and a lesser grace,
  but you will find
  no peace in the end
  save in her presence.
  • Amaranth.

• Be indigestible, hard, ungiving.
  so that, living within,
  you beget, self-out-of-self,
  selfless,
  that pearl-of-great-price.
  • The Walls Do Not Fall.

• The reason is:
  rats leave the sinking ship
  but we...
  we...
  didn't leave,
  so the ship
  didn't sink,
  and that's madness,
  Lear's song
  that's Touchstone's forest jest,
  that's swan of Avon logic.
  • May 1943.

• We don't have to know,
  only to be:
  let go the jumble of worn words,
  reason and vanity.
  • Star by Day.

Quotes about H.D.

• I knew all the poets-their poems-when I was quite young. (Who were your favorites?) G.P.: I loved Robinson Jeffers. I loved Auden, I loved H.D.
  • 1981 interview in Conversations with Grace Paley edited by Gerhard Bach & Blaine Hall (2013)

External links

• Chronology of H.D.'s life and publications.
• H.D. at Modern American Poetry.
• The H.D. papers with a timeline at Yale University.
• Twitchell-Waas, Jeffrey . Seaward: H.D.'s 'Helen in Egypt' as a response to Pound's Cantos in Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 1998.
• Borderline quotes at the Internet Movie Database.
• Hilda Doolittle on IMDb.