What's O'Clock by Amy Lowell
"What's O'Clock" is a posthumously published collection of poetry by Amy Lowell, which earned her a Pulitzer Prize and features some of her most significant poems, such as "The On-looker," "Lilacs," and "The Sisters." This collection reflects Lowell's engagement with a variety of themes, including Western history, the theater, and the evolving role of women in literature during the 1920s, a time when female writers like Willa Cather and Edna St. Vincent Millay were redefining literary norms. In poems like "The Sisters," Lowell positions herself within the lineage of women poets, linking her work to figures from Sappho to contemporary peers, while also expressing her modern sensibility. Despite not identifying as a feminist in a political sense, she actively participated in public discussions about modern poetry, shaping her literary identity. Her admiration for the Italian actress Eleonora Duse is notably influential in her work, particularly in "Lilacs," which intertwines her poetic self with the spirit of her era and her New England roots while echoing Walt Whitman's elegiac style. "What's O'Clock" is regarded as a significant achievement in Lowell's career, with its title suggesting her ambitious aspirations for impact and legacy. Although her recognition waned after her death, a resurgence of interest in her work emerged in the 1970s, especially among feminist critics, who highlighted her contributions to American literature and influenced later poets like Sylvia Plath.
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Subject Terms
What's O'Clock by Amy Lowell
Identification: A book of poetry
Author: Amy Lowell
Date: 1925
Published posthumously and awarded the Pulitzer Prize, this collection of poetry includes some of Amy Lowell’s most notable poems, including “The On-looker,” “Lilacs,” “The Sisters,” “Nuit Blanche,” and “Eleonora Duse.” These poems and others reflect the poet’s wide-ranging concerns with Western history, the theater, and the role of women in literary life at a time when women writers such as Willa Cather, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Elinor Wylie were reshaping the figure of the female writer in response to the changing literary and cultural currents of the 1920s.
In “The Sisters,” Lowell presents herself as a modern woman assessing her place in the ranks of women poets from the ancient Greek poet Sappho to nineteenth-century poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson. Like many of the other poems in What’s O’Clock, “The Sisters” reflects the sensibility of a writer willing to bring her poetry into the public arena and to measure it against the achievements of her illustrious predecessors as well as her contemporaries. Although not a feminist in political terms, Lowell was outspoken in her desire to engage with history, taking to public platforms throughout the 1920s to debate the proper subjects and styles of modern poetry.
Lowell greatly admired Italian stage actor Eleonora Duse and acknowledged her devotion to the self-directed Duse as one of the primary reasons she became a poet. Indeed, critics consider “Lilacs” to be Lowell’s own quest to fuse her poet-self to the spirit of the 1920s and, more particularly, to her native New England. At the same time, the poem also recalls Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” his elegy for President Abraham Lincoln. Linking herself to Whitman, Lowell presents a reflective view of her own life and career, thus making her consciousness the subject of the poem itself—as did many modernist writers of the 1920s, including T. S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams.
Impact
What’s O’Clock remains one of the highest achievements of Lowell’s career. Many feel that the book’s title—an allusion to a scene in Shakespeare’s historical play Richard III—suggests the scope of her ambition and the impact she hoped to have on her contemporaries and on posterity. Although her reputation declined after her death, respect for Lowell’s work revived in the 1970s when feminist critics began reevaluating the canon of American literature and rediscovering the works of women writers and poets. Later poets such as Sylvia Plath regarded Lowell as an important literary predecessor in much the same way Lowell contemplated hers in “The Sisters.”
Bibliography
Benvenuto, Richard. Amy Lowell. Boston: Twayne, 1985.
Munich, Adrienne, and Melissa Bradshaw. Amy Lowell: American Modern. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004.