Lilacs By Amy Lowell ( Grades 10+)

“God made me a business woman, and I made myself a poet.” Amy Lowell was a poet, performer, editor, and translator who devoted her life to the cause of modern poetry. Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1874, into a prominent New England family and became a flamboyant woman whose behavior belied her upbringing. S he flouted convention with her proto-feminist poetry and unabashedly public persona. Lowell continued to publish volumes of poetry throughout her life, but Legends (1921) would be the last collection of her own work published before her death. In it, she uses 11 legends from around the globe as a basis for 11 poems. This poem, "Lilacs" is said to be one of Lowell’s personal favourites.