Moreover, her best and most characteristic poetry was very puzzling to conventional readers and remains so to this day. The language of these poems is chiefly pictorial, with the result that she was dismissed as a writer who touched only the physical surfaces of the world and so failed to illuminate any of its deeper meanings. Though critics note that Lowell, at her best, is a writer of extraordinary verve, freshness, and beauty of expression, she is little better understood sixty years after her death than she was in 1912 when she published her first book of poems,
A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass. Born into a Prominent Family
Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1874, into a prominent New England family. As an essayist for the Dictionary of Literary Biography recounted, "She was a descendant of Percival Lowle, a merchant from Bristol who immigrated in 1639 to Newbury, Massachusetts. The Lowells of subsequent generations made their way to the pinnacle of Boston society, as the popular saying 'the Cabots speak only to the Lowells and the Lowells speak only to God' attests. Amy Lowell's grandfathers, John Amory Lowell and Abbott Lawrence, were pioneers in the development of the cotton industry in New England.
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