Hilda Doolittle

Repetitive poetry is something that should be approached cautiously. Few people can choose a subject worth improvising on, and make it a poem worth reading. Hilda Doolittle, aka H.D., was one of them. Her famous words on violets are a great example of this in her book of poems Sea Garden here.

Poems like this make you want to go outside, explore trails on a mountain, look for hidden flowers. Her use of colors is masterful; instead of setting up colors in a grocery list of clashing random words, her words draw you in and you immediately imagine some mountain in a place like Wales, with miles upon miles of pure landscape, unmarred by civilization.

II

But we bring violets,great masses—single, sweet,wood-violets, stream-violets,violets from a wet marsh.

Violets in clumps from hills,tufts with earth at the roots,violets tugged from rocks,blue violets, moss, cliff, river-violets.

Yellow violets' gold,burnt with a rare tint—violets like red ashamong tufts of grass.

We bring deep-purplebird-foot violets.

We bring the hyacinth-violet,sweet, bare, chill to the touch—and violets whiter than the in-rushof your own white surf.