The Touch of You
Bill Greer illustrates Amy Lowell's poetry, 1972
In the midst of desperately trying to get last-minute things ready for baby and a seemingly endless amount of scans of my amniotic fluid, I’ve been trying to enjoy the earliest moments of spring. In New York, we’ve had days of pure unadulterated spring beauty but, so far, many more that are dismal, gray, rainy and cold—at least the daffodils are endlessly joyful.
Below are some poems related to spring by the American Imagist poet Amy Lowell, with some accompanying illustrations, from a small collection of her works published by Hallmark Editions in 1972, The Touch of You: Amy Lowell’s Poems of Love and Beauty. From the Brahmin Lowell family, Amy was “a poet, performer, editor, and translator who devoted her life to the cause of modern poetry… A flamboyant woman whose behavior belied her upbringing in a proper and prestigious New England family, she flouted convention with her proto-feminist poetry and unabashedly public persona.” In addition to writing many volumes of poetry of her own, Lowell edited several volumes of Some Imagist Poets: An Anthology (1915, 1916 and 1917), where she also laid out her criteria for Imagist writers:
1. To use the language of common speech …
2. To create new rhythms …
3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject …
4. To present an image …
5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.
6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.
The illustrations are by Bill Greer, whose work you might recognise from the Morgan-Greer Tarot; by far my favourite tarot deck, it was first published in 1979 and has stayed in print to today. Drawing from the Rider Waite Smith deck, Greer’s boldly outlined and coloured illustrations are at once sumptuous and graphic—the cards' symbolism so clearly defined that I find it one of the easiest decks to read. Add in the very period 70s aesthetic (and hunky Magician) and it’s clear why it has become a classic.
There isn’t much online about Bill Greer. I know he illustrated three of these books of poetry for Hallmark Editions—the others being William Shakespeare and Boris Pasternak—and also lent his pen to illustrations for magazines and newspapers. For these Lowell illustrations, Greer’s work is lighter than his tarot deck's; the pen lines are thin, and the colour washes light. These Hallmark Editions books are similar in size and appearance to the Sunbeam Library ones I’ve written about previously; small books published by greeting card companies and sold alongside cards as gifts—tokens of love and affection available at your local drugstore.
How gorgeous are these illustrations?
