Welcome back to The Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today's Thursday, September 3rd, 2020.

Today's poem is by an American poet named Hilda Doolittle. She published under a pen name HD.

She just used those two initials, those two letters. She lived from September 10th, 1886 to September 27th, 1961.

So given that she was both born and died in September,

it's the right month to read a poem by her.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called Helen,

and it goes like this.

All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face,

the luster as of olives where she stands and the white hands.

All Greece reviles the wan face when she smiles, hating it deeper still when it grows,

wan and white remembering past enchantments and past ills.

Greece sees unmoved God's daughter, born of love,

the beauty of cool feet and slenderest knees,

could love indeed the maid,

only if she were laid white ash amid funereal cypresses.

I don't know. ash amid funeral cypresses. A great deal of Hilda Doolittle's poetry focuses on concepts from ancient Greek literature,

as of course this poem does, as well as Greek mythology.

And she was well educated, well read.

And she was also, at the same time, a poet who was championed by modernist poets like

Ezra Pound.

So she is an interesting collision of classical literature, classical themes, classical ideas

with modern sentiments, modernist forms, or lack thereof,

...