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The Artist

By Amy Lowell 1874–1925 Amy Lowell

Why do you subdue yourself in golds and purples?

Why do you dim yourself with folded silks?

Do you not see that I can buy brocades in any draper’s shop,

And that I am choked in the twilight of all these colors.

How pale you would be, and startling—

How quiet;

But your curves would spring upward

Like a clear jet of flung water,

You would quiver like a shot-up spray of water,

You would waver, and relapse, and tremble.

And I too should tremble,

Watching.

Murex-dyes and tinsel—

And yet I think I could bear your beauty unshaded.

Amy Lowell, “The Artist” from The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell. Copyright © 1955 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Copyright © renewed 1983 by Houghton Mifflin Company, Brinton P. Roberts, and G. D'Andelot, Esquire. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Source: Poetry (September 1919).

Biography

An oft-quoted remark attributed to poet Amy Lowell applies to both her determined personality and her sense of humor: "God made me a business woman," Lowell is reported to have quipped, "and I made myself a poet." During a career that spanned just over a dozen years, she wrote and published over 650 poems, yet scholars cite Lowell's tireless efforts to awaken American readers to contemporary trends in poetry as her more . . .

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