Ecos sáficos en la poesía norteamericana: Amy Lowell y la feminización del movimiento imaginista / Sapphic Echoes in American Poetry: Amy Lowell and the Feminization of the Imagist Movement

Resumen

RESUMEN

Amy Lowell (1874-1925) publicó en todas las revistas más prestigiosas de poesía del momento tanto en los Estados Unidos como en Europa. En los trece años que su muerte le permitió dedicar a la poesía Lowell hizo suya, para horror de muchos, la absoluta convicción de que el público estaba preparado para entender y disfrutar las nuevas tendencias poéticas y por eso viajó por todo el país dando conferencias y leyendo poesía. La importancia de este convencimiento es que Lowell, una de las responsables directas del gran flujo de nuevas tendencias presente en la poesía norteamericana, hizo llegar al gran público los innovadores preceptos del Imaginismo. Uno de sus mayores logros en este contexto, que es el que este artículo estudia y propone, es que la poética de Amy Lowell y sus estudios de crítica literaria conllevan la feminización del Imaginismo y la inclusión, en un mundo poético donde la poesía escrita por mujeres estaba relegada al sentimentalismo y por tanto minimizada y menospreciada, la poesía de la mujer con voz propia en todas sus facetas en las vanguardias del siglo pasado que en la poesía norteamericana son precursores directos de las vanguardias actuales. Como ha comentado Lillian Faderman, desde Safo y hasta 1970 no habrá muchas otras oportunidades de leer abiertamente poemas tan sumamente irreverentes con los predicamentos del patriarcado en relación con la posición de la mujer en la poesía.

Palabras clave: poesía norteamericana, Amy Lowell, lesbianismo, feminismo, crítica literaria, Imaginismo, Modernismo, vanguardias.

ABSTRACT

Amy Lowell (1874-1925) published in many of the most prestigious and relevant poetry journals of her lifetime both in the United States and in Europe. In the thirteen years that spanned from her discovery of poetic writing till her death she was absolutely convinced that the general public was prepared to understand and to enjoy the new poetics advocated by the modernist movement at large. This conviction took her on many tours around the country delivering papers on the subject and participating in poetry readings that were authentic stand up performances that the public greatly appreciated. The importance of this is that Amy Lowell, being herself one of the most prominent propellers of avant-guard tendencies in the American poetic spectrum of the time, introduced the public to the precepts of Imagism and its possibilities of newness in the poetic discourse. All in all, one of the most interesting aspects in Amy Lowell’s contribution to American poetry is her insistence in approaching imagism from a feminine perspective leading in this way a serious approach to poetry written by women, by no means the only one, that presupposed the feminization of a movement that started as a very much masculine and elitist entrepreneur. The inclusion of a rigorous study of the poetry written by women in this context implies that the poetic voice of the female writer be taken seriously and be directly inscribed in the poetic world of the first half of the twentieth century that acts as a springboard to most of the new tendencies in American poetry to be observed nowadays. As Lillian Faderman has noticed from Sappho until the 1970s there will be little opportunities to read such irreverent poems against patriarchal postulates in relation to women’s poetic subject position as those written by Amy Lowell. To explore this postulate is the main aim and objective in the pages of this paper.

Key words: North American poetry, Amy Lowell, lesbianism, feminism, literary critique, Imagism, Modernism, avant-guard.