BI. Amy Lowell

16. Florence Ayscough and Amy Lowell: Correspondence of a Friendship. Edited by Harley Farnsworth MacNair. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1945.

The Lowell/Ayscough correspondence of 28 June 1918 to 17 February 1922 is preoccupied with the publication and reception of Fir-Flower Tablets (10), and turns frequently to discussion of the ‘pictographic method’ of rendering ideograms. What strikes one above all, however, is Lowell’s nearly pathological desire to upstage the versions and translations of East-Asian literature of Pound (especially BK15 and 24), Fenollosa (whose name she misspells throughout ), Bynner (The Jade Mountain, 1929), and Waley (see D26), and the fact that Ayscough’s knowledge of Chinese is rudimentary and Lowell’s non-existent. Reviewed by Bynner in BE13. Reprints 27 with additions.