Vetter - By Avon River

BY AVON RIVER

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA

Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
New College of Florida, Sarasota
University of Central Florida, Orlando
University of Florida, Gainesville
University of North Florida, Jacksonville
University of South Florida, Tampa
University of West Florida, Pensacola

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA

Gainesville Tallahassee Tampa Boca Raton
Pensacola Orlando Miami Jacksonville Ft. Myers Sarasota

BY AVON RIVER

H.D.

Edited by Lara Vetter

Copyright 2014 by Lara Vetter

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

This book may be available in an electronic edition.

21 20 19 18 17 166 5 4 3 2 1

First cloth printing, 2014

First paperback printing, 2016

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014937642

ISBN 978-0-8130-4997-7 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-8130-6237-2 (pbk.)

The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.

University Press of Florida

15 Northwest 15th Street

Gainesville, FL 32611-2079

http://www.upf.com

Contents

Acknowledgments

Working with H.D.s writings is a labor of love for me, but I am not the only one who has worked to bring this project to fruition. First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to Cynthia Hogue and Jane Augustine. I benefitted greatly from their incisive reading of the manuscript and their useful suggestions. My friend and colleague Annette Debo, who is likewise incredibly generous, continues to serve as an expert sounding board within a broader community of H.D. scholars. As always, I must also thank Randy Malamud for introducing me to H.D. all those years ago. The organizers of Rereading Poets Reading at the University of Maryland, College Park, invited me to share my earliest work on By Avon River, and the response from the symposiums participantsincluding Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Alicia Ostriker, Martha Nell Smith, and Christina Walterpersuaded me that there was genuine interest in seeing this book come back into print. The University Press of Florida is to be commended for taking on the task of publishing so much of H.D.s late prose, and I am especially grateful for my editor, Shannon McCarthy, who has been enthusiastic in her support of the project. Elizabeth Detwiler copyedited the manuscript. Nevil Parker and Louise OFarrell shepherded it into print. My graduate assistant, Arthur Basler, helped me proof and index the final text.

Profuse thanks go to Nancy Kuhl, curator of poetry in the Yale Collection of American Literature, and to the ever-efficient and knowledgeable staff of librarians at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. A fellowship awarded by the Beinecke Library Visiting Scholars program and a faculty research grant from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) afforded me two invaluable research trips to read the H.D. Papers. I would also like to acknowledge the generosity and hospitality of H.D.s grandson, Val Schaffner, who granted me access to the Bryher Library at his home. A small grant from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, UNCC, helped to facilitate that trip. The patient and resourceful librarians at the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library helped me navigate the May Sarton Papers. Another grant from UNCCs Department of English permitted me to obtain materials I needed to complete this project.

Declan Spring and the Schaffner family have been very supportive of this edition, and they kindly granted me permission to quote from published and unpublished writings by H.D. and Bryher (copyright 2014 by The Schaffner Family Foundation, used by permission of The Schaffner Family Foundation and New Directions Publishing Corporation, agents). I am thankful, too, for permission to quote from letters by H.D. and Bryher held by the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

Finally, I must thank my family and friends. I am especially appreciative of the unwavering support of my father, Fred Vetter, for whatever endeavor I undertake. My greatest debt of gratitude is reserved for Kirk Melnikoff, whose love sustains and inspires me. His expertise in the English Renaissance has been an indispensable resource in completing this particular project, and it was his delight in discovering that H.D. wrote a book about his field that initially piqued my own interest in this forgotten volume.

Introduction

The modernist poet known as H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) declined offers of refuge and remained in London during World War II, enduring the relentless bombings of the Blitz that overtook London from the fall of 1940 to the spring of 1941, the food rationings that left her ill and malnourished, and a second wave of doodlebug and V2 bombings near the close of the war.

H.D. had been known as the Imagist par excellence, an innovative transatlantic poet composing in a genre that tends toward stasisa glimpse, a snapshot, a moment in time. But for H.D., By Avon River and her other writings of the 1940s signify a shift she was more than ready to embrace: upset over a negative review of the first book of Trilogy, H.D. complained, Why one must write at 60 (or near 60) what one wrote at 16, must remain a mystery! This book represents, then, a singular turning point for a major modernist poet, who will evolve away from the short Imagist lyric and toward the path of late modernism in verse and prose reflections on issues of nationality and on the vexed intersection of the personal and the political.

The first part of By Avon River, Good Frend, is verse. Titled after a phrase from Shakespeares epitaph, the three-poem sequence revives Claribel from The Tempest, the unfortunate daughter of Alonso whose arranged marriage to the King of Tunis is the catalyst for the action of the play. The shipwreck survivors are traveling home from her wedding when they are waylaid by the rage of Prosperos storm. Though Claribel never appears on stagenever speaks a word of dialogueH.D. creates for her a plot and a quest. In the first poem, The Tempest, the speaker meditates on Shakespeares poaching: his sources for The Tempest and his theft as a Stratford youth of Sir Lucys deer. She identifies Claribel as a forgotten character and reflects on her arranged marriage to the King of Tunis, subtly aligning those nuptials with the 1613 arranged union that was thought to be the occasion for the play, that of the daughter of James I of England, Elizabeth, to Frederick of Bohemia, the Elector Palatine. The more lyrical second poem, Rosemary, picks up this thread, overlaying Shakespeare with Prospero, and Claribel with the present-day speaker who, like H.D., makes a pilgrimage to Stratford. The final poem of the sequence, entitled Claribels Way to God, liberates Claribel from Shakespeares play, transporting her home to medieval Italy where she aids the Order of the St. Clares and attends a fallen soldier.