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Mary Meriam
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Lady of the Moon Kindle Edition

by Mary Meriam (Author), Lillian Faderman (Author), Amy Lowell (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 5 ratings
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Amy Lowell’s contemporaries, writing at a time when lesbians were invisible, described her as an old maid. But as Lillian Faderman argues, Lowell wrote “some of the most remarkable, barely encoded, lesbian poems since Sappho,” while living in a Boston marriage with her muse, Ada Dwyer Russell. Lady of the Moon offers a combination of three voices on the Boston marriage of Amy Lowell and Ada Dwyer Russell. The first part contains a selection of Lowell’s love poems to Ada. The second part contains a scholarly essay by Lillian Faderman that analyzes these poems in relation to Lowell’s life. The third part contains a 27-sonnet sequence by Mary Meriam which draws from the first two parts and supports the story with imaginative details.

In this jewel of a volume, a great love is reanimated. Imagist Amy Lowell’s love poems to actress Ada Russell, pioneering lesbian-feminist scholar Lillian Faderman’s landmark essay on Lowell and Russell, and contemporary poet Mary Meriam’s heartfelt sonnet sequence speaking to Russell in Lowell’s voice, combine to create a remarkable erotic and poetic event. Like Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Lowell and Russell had a great creative partnership that made an indelible mark on literary and lesbian history. Lowell called her “tense and urgent love” for Russell an “amethyst garden;” today’s readers will find gems of all colors in Lady of the Moon.
—Lisa L. Moore, author of Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes (Lambda Literary Award, 2012), and Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies, The University of Texas at Austin

What an erotic trinity! Amy Lowell’s fiery poems about Ada Dwyer Russell; Lillian Faderman’s illuminating essay about the couple and their “Boston marriage”; and Mary Meriam’s contemporary poems in Lowell’s lustful voice. Forget “Amygism” and “Patterns”: with this brilliantly edited selection of works by and about Amy Lowell, Mary Meriam restores Lowell to her rightful status as a groundbreaking feminist poet.
—Julie Kane, National Poetry Series winner and recent Louisiana Poet Laureate

Mary Meriam writes as Amy Lowell and her beloved Ada. She imagines, in a variety of sonnet forms, the richness that Lowell removed from her own love poems. While making use of Lowell’s language, the sonnets’ insistence on the psychological fullness of the two women and their relationship unsettles the century-old sounds so that a sense of quaint mimicry falls quickly by the wayside. The organization of the volume’s three parts is astute, though, finally, these sonnets cohere into a whole of their own.
—Marcia Karp, poet and translator
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  1. Print length
    90 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publication date
    December 29, 2018
  5. File size
    1585 KB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Not Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
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Editorial Reviews

Review

This three-part literary portrait of the renowned poet Amy Lowell in light of her lesbian relationship with Ada Russell, her lifetime companion, lover, supporter, and muse--whom Lowell lovingly called "the lady of the moon"--breathes new life into Amy Lowell's stature and significance.-- The Gay & Lesbian Review

Amy Lowell's life and work have been treated with dismissal, with contempt, and with wild projection and distortion. Lady of the Moon returns her to us as a lesbian... and as a Muse. It is a testimony of the kind of blossoming that a woman can experience, especially a gender non-conforming lesbian, when she is fully seen and fully loved by another woman.
-- Carolyn Gage

Amy Lowell lived and wrote in a time when she could not be entirely herself, could not fully claim her rightful space among the great writers of love poetry and celebrations of the beloved. She had to reveal her truths by hiding them. As much as she cloaked her work, shifted genders of speaker and beloved, the truth of the poems resonate now as unabashed declarations of love and desire for her partner, Ada Russell. This collection places the relationship with Russell at the forefront in such a way that it honors what could not be honored before.
-- New Books in Poetry

Meriam's powerful love poems stand as fine examples of erotic poetry in their own right, and ought to reawaken people to Lowell's works, which remain as fresh, bold and sensual as they were when originally published.-- The Critical Flame

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07MHB5KK2
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Headmistress Press (December 29, 2018)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 29, 2018
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1585 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 90 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 5 ratings

About the author

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Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam

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Mary Meriam studied poetry at Columbia University (MFA) and Bennington College (BA). She works as an editor and publisher of lesbian poetry and art, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas. Her most recent poetry collection is Pools of June (Exot Books, 2022). Her poems have appeared in Literary Imagination, Literary Matters, Poetry, Post Road, Prelude, Rattle, Subtropics, and The Poetry Review.

Customer reviews

5 out of 5 stars
5 out of 5
5 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Dinah
5.0 out of 5 stars Mary Meriam holds space for Amy Lowell
Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2015
Verified Purchase
This book of poems is well done, and so well worth reading. Lesbians especially, and indeed all women, will be likely to fall in love with this book. I have been keeping it close at hand and reading a little of it at a time.
Amy Lowell was a fine poet and I knew little of her until Lady of the Moon introduced me to her.
I think it is so fine that Mary Meriam is holding space for lesbians, even those of us who lived before now and became overlooked.
It is a time for women to cherish lesbians, and to honor and read the work of those who have gone before.

Women writers who wrote before and were overlooked can have our attention now.
2 people found this helpful
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Dreamer
5.0 out of 5 stars it is now widely recognized that Lowell's greatest work was the love poetry she wrote to her ...
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2016
This is an essential volume for all poetry lovers. Thanks in large part to Lillian Faderman's groundbreaking essay on Amy Lowell, reprinted here, it is now widely recognized that Lowell's greatest work was the love poetry she wrote to her life's companion, the stage actress Ada Dwyer Russell. Mary Meriam has collected the best of Lowell's love poems in this book, including such gems as the starkly Imagist "Taxi," the O'Keeffe-esque "Aubade," the highly moving "A Rainy Night," and the overtly autobiographical "Madonna of the Evening Flowers." Meriam's own 27-poem sonnet sequence, tracing the trajectory of the Lowell/Dwyer relationship in their voices, is a tour de force.
2 people found this helpful
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Iris Jamahl Dunkle
5.0 out of 5 stars I highly recommend this book to those who enjoy strong lyric poetry ...
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2016
In Lady of the Moon, Mary Meriam not only brings into print the vivid, sensual and lyric verse of Amy Lowell, she also brings Lowell back to life through her twenty-seven sonnets written in the voice of Lowell. I highly recommend this book to those who enjoy strong lyric poetry and for those who want to see history brought back to life through the written word.
One person found this helpful
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Gail White
5.0 out of 5 stars Dazzling Sonnets
Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2015
The great joy of this book to me was the sonnets by Mary Meriam, one of the superb sonnet writers of our time. Written in the voices of both Amy and Ada, the poems are masterpieces of craftsmanship and authentic voices of passion as they tell a story of love with all its advances, retreats, and final miracles of understanding.
3 people found this helpful
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Joy Ladin
5.0 out of 5 stars The gorgeous, unabashed lyricism here thrills me, and ...
Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2016
The gorgeous, unabashed lyricism here thrills me, and reminds me of a strain of modern American poetics that was eclipsed by Ezra Pound's dismissal of Amy Lowell's work - a strain Mary Meriam enables us to hear in full-throated glory.
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