{"id":113720,"date":"2017-08-09T11:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-09T15:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=113720"},"modified":"2017-08-10T17:03:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-10T21:03:32","slug":"h-d-notebook-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"H.D. Notebook, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Headnote:\u00a0Part 1 of this piece appeared\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0(on\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review Daily), on Wednesday, May 3, 2017. Mr. Madrid originally intended to publish\u00a0part 2 in June, but lost track of time. You needn\u2019t read part 1 to understand part 2. There is no part 3.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>

H.D.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2767\u00a01
\nPoetry readers who spend a lot of time in used bookstores will have seen some of H.D.\u2019s novels from time to time. They stand out because their titles are unfamiliar, and because they are recently printed books. One does not find old-looking hardcovers.<\/p>\n

Asphodel<\/i>. What is that.\u00a0HERmione<\/i>. What is that.\u00a0Majic Ring.<\/i>\u00a0The White Rose and the Red.<\/i>\u00a0Friends of modernism say: \u201cWhy have I never heard of these?\u201d<\/p>\n

Before my H.D. project, my assumption was that these books must have been previously judged unfit for publication on the grounds of their containing explicit scenes of girl love. Wrong. None of them have explicit scenes of any kind of love. The only hot-sex bit in any of the H.D. prose I\u2019ve read actually\u00a0was<\/i>\u00a0printed in her lifetime. Privately printed, but printed. It\u2019s in her novella\u00a0Nights<\/i>, and it\u2019s woefully hetero. (It\u2019s her and that musician guy, father of her only kid.)<\/p>\n

My next wrong thought was that she had written all those books \u201cfor the drawer,\u201d just her way of working out her feelings, et cetera. This would have made her a very unusual case: a writer whose\u00a0prose<\/i>\u00a0was private but whose poetry was invariably intended for the public. Most people are just the opposite, but that doesn\u2019t matter, \u2019cuz she\u00a0did<\/i>\u00a0intend to publish these novels and memoirs\u2014the ones she finished anyway, with maybe like one exception. She sent \u2019em around or allowed Norman Pearson to send \u2019em around for her. They just never found takers.<\/p>\n

This\u2014or rather the equivalent of this\u2014would not happen today. Or I doubt it. Semi-unintelligible melodramas, thoroughly interesting and impossible to care about, where the point of view is suppressed to the threshold of nonexistence\u2014there are many, many small presses who would be happy to put these works into circulation in 2017. Their mission statements literally say this.
\n
\n\u2767\u00a02
\nH.D. fans rightly bristle at the idea that her best and most characteristic poetic work is contained in the 1925\u00a0Collected Poems<\/i>, published when she was thirty-eight. Much huffing and puffing has been huffed and puffed over the last forty years in an effort to distract potential readers from the pernicious idea that she was mainly an Imagist. She cannot have remained a mere party member, she must have struck out on her own. For such is the nature of genius, especially wronged genius.<\/p>\n

That line of thought is so romantic and uplifting it\u2019s almost impossible to accept that it has any truth to it. Yet it\u2019s quite true. She really did go from being a kind of miniaturist, whose every poem was designed to stand alone like a carved stele in the middle of a field, to being a poet who thought in terms of book-length kaleidoscopic visions and static narratives. Little bit like certain long medieval poems that nobody reads these days. The density of the material\u2014or better say viscosity\u2014changes a lot. She becomes more fluid. Granted, all her life she was hard to understand, and she always has mythology on the brain, but\u2014at least for some people\u2014her last three books are where the action is.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m one of these. This, despite the fact that (a) I usually prefer steles to stories, and (b) I\u00a0much<\/i>\u00a0prefer H.D.\u2019s 1915 mentality to her post\u2013World War II mentality. My considered opinion as to why I and so many others prefer her last books is that, simply, she became a better writer.<\/p>\n

This is the place to mention: There is no need for a conspiracy theory regarding the fact that anthologists always reach for the 1925\u00a0Collected<\/i>. The much more ready-to-hand explanation is that excerpts from\u00a0Trilogy<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Helen in Egypt<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Hermetic Definition\u00a0<\/i>never \u201csound right\u201d to people who like those books. Anthologies are for stele poems.<\/p>\n

Reminds me of a joke Samuel Johnson alludes to in the preface of his edition of a certain Very Big Poet, whose greatness was (Johnson asserts) not to be found in particular passages but in the overall effect. The joke was: \u201cHe who tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in\u00a0Hierocles,<\/i>\u00a0who, when he offered his house for sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2767\u00a03
\nSpeaking of Shakespeare, whoever has any doubts about H.D.\u2019s later poetry should get a load of the recordings we have of her doing Helen in Egypt. I don\u2019t know too many poets who sound like trained Shakespearean actors. I know plenty of people who can perform their own stuff, but not like\u00a0that<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The comparison I am about to make has an element of wildness to it; I\u2019m going to admit that up front. But surely you\u2019ve wondered what Shakespeare sounded like when he performed parts in his own plays? He was, after all, a trained actor, and I think we can agree it would be, ah, challenging for any actor to be more\u00a0Shakespearean<\/i>\u00a0than he … Anyhow, H.D. performing\u00a0Helen in Egypt<\/i>\u00a0is the closest thing I know to that situation. She out-Helens Helen. Pray\u00a0you<\/i>\u00a0check it out<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2767\u00a04
\nJust a few words about the rhymes in\u00a0Trilogy<\/i>. Nobody thinks of H.D. as a master rhymer, but if I ever write my rhyme book, she\u2019s definitely getting a chapter.<\/p>\n

Remember: H.D. was more of a priestess than anything else. She was more priestess than lover, more priestess than thinker, more priestess than woman, American, or (truth be told) artist.\u00a0Trilogy<\/i>\u00a0is good partly because she directly made\u00a0being a priestess<\/i>\u00a0her theme. The whole thing is spoken from the vantage of a tripod at Delphi. As it were.<\/p>\n

What does that have to do with rhyme. Well.\u00a0Trilogy<\/i>\u00a0is basically three half-hour-long incantations. Everything about them suggests that the poet is in a trance. And the stuff puts the reader into a trance, too. Long, breathless, agglutinative sentences serve this purpose; they \u201cdraw you by the nose\u201d; they make you get used to that vatic atmosphere of semi-comprehension. They get you into a spirit of just going with it. It\u2019s vital the language be heightened in a way that is convincingly superhuman: that\u2019s where rhyme comes in.<\/p>\n

All rhyme does that. Anything in a poetic presentation that \u201ccould not possibly be improvised\u201d yet seems improvised\u2014does that. But H.D. engineers something quite out of the ordinary. We have no established term for her technique. I call it \u201cpeek-a-boo rhyme.\u201d I just mean unmistakable rhymes and rhyme effects in places you don\u2019t expect to find them. The middles of lines, say, or just really close together. Things like this:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Good was the tasteless\u00a0pod<\/span><\/b>,
\nstripped from the manna-beans, pulse, lentils:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

they were\u00a0angry<\/span><\/b> when we were so\u00a0hungry<\/span>
\n<\/b>for the nourishment,\u00a0God<\/span><\/b>;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

they snatched off our amulets,
\ncharms are\u00a0not<\/span><\/b>, they said,\u00a0grace<\/span><\/strong>;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

but\u00a0gods<\/span><\/b>\u00a0always\u00a0face<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>two-ways<\/span><\/strong>,
\nso let us search the old\u00a0high<\/span>ways<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

for the\u00a0true<\/b>–rune<\/b>, the\u00a0right<\/span><\/strong>-spell,
\nrecover old values\u00a0\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

For my purposes, it\u2019s specially interesting that though she is deeply in love with occult semantic connections between words, she still follows the classic procedures for rhyme selection. The ideal rhyme pair, to her as to almost everybody else, was one in which the two words bore no relation to each other except that of sound.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u00a0\u2767\u00a05
\nThe Freud book. It\u2019s called\u00a0Tribute to Freud<\/i>, written in 1944, published in 1956. At the time of publication, Freud had been dead seventeen or eighteen years.<\/p>\n

What you won\u2019t find in the book: H.D. revealing to Freud anything about her family, her lovers, her ideas, or her activities. She\u00a0did<\/i>\u00a0tell him about those things, as we know from other sources, but the author of\u00a0Tribute to Freud<\/i>\u00a0was much more interested in (a) the interpretation of one or two dreams, and (b) parading the personal relationship she had with \u201cthe Professor.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not speaking loosely when I say she very much liked the idea that she was to be, in some sense, Freud\u2019s successor. Whoever is interested in that, and the fact that she saw herself as the necessary corrective to skeptical, unbelieving Freud, will find\u00a0Tribute<\/i>\u00a0much more revealing than anything else she ever wrote.<\/p>\n

For example, there is an unforgettable scene where Freud has an \u201coutburst.\u201d Paraphrase will not do here; you must see H.D.\u2019s exact words:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

I did not know what enraged him suddenly. I veered round off the couch, my feet on the floor. I do not know exactly what I had said. [A page and a half of slow-burn divagation omitted here.<\/i>] The Professor himself is uncanonical enough; he is beating with his hand, with his fist, on the head-piece of the old-fashioned horsehair sofa that had heard more secrets than the confession box of any popular Roman Catholic father-confessor in his heyday. This was the homely historical instrument of the original scheme of psychotherapy, of psychoanalysis, the science of the unraveling of the tangled skeins of the unconscious mind and the healing implicit in the process.\u00a0Consciously<\/i>, I was not aware of having said anything that might account for Professor\u2019s outburst. And even as I veered around, facing him, my mind was detached enough to wonder if this was some idea of\u00a0his<\/i>\u00a0for speeding up the analytic content or redirecting the flow of associated images. The Professor said, \u201cThe trouble is\u2014I am an old man\u2014you do not think it worth your while to love me<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Anyone reading this who has a soul will certainly want to see H.D.\u2019s reaction shot. What in the world did she make of this shocking revelation? Yet anybody who knows H.D.\u2019s prose will tell ya: she would never, ever give a \u201creaction shot\u201d for a thing like that. Outbursts are followed by white space.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe artist presents; he does not comment\u201d\u2014nobody ever took that maxim to heart more than H.D. The scene must speak for itself. And if it\u2019s hopelessly ambiguous, essentially mute\u2014tough titty.<\/p>\n

\u2767\u00a06
\nOne turns to H.D.\u2019s letters partly longing to hear her come off it. And she does. Her letters, for example, to Norman Pearson and Robert Duncan, are utterly straightforward. She seems neither coy nor self-important nor straining for effect. The problem is she doesn\u2019t touch on any intimate themes whatsoever. The \u201cgossip\u201d element is\u00a0very<\/i>\u00a0mild, the way one might venture a little dot of gossip with a new acquaintance, to sound his or her taste for gossip itself. That kind of tentativeness makes perfect sense in dealing with Robert Duncan, with whom she only corresponded for a brief period before she died. But Pearson she knew for twenty or thirty years \u2026<\/p>\n

If you want to check the real H.D. against her character in\u00a0Bid Me to Live<\/i>, you would think the ideal thing would be to spend some quality time with her letters to Richard Aldington\u2014one of the other main characters in\u00a0Bid<\/i>. But a big disappointment awaits you! The son of a bitch burned all of her letters from that time period. H.D., however, did not destroy his letters, so all we get, covering World War I\u00a0and the next twenty years<\/i>\u00a0(in\u00a0Richard Aldington and H.D.: Their Lives in Letters, 1918\u20131961<\/i>) is literally hundreds of pages of Aldington\u2019s letters, all written in his distinctively rich vein of self-approval. H.D. speaks for the first time on page 245\u2014Halloween 1939,\u00a0\u00e6tatis su\u00e6<\/i>\u00a0fifty-three. The letters I want to read haven\u2019t been printed.<\/p>\n

\u2767\u00a07
\nThe phenomenon of staying friends with one\u2019s ex-lovers. All of \u2019em\u2014or anyhow all the ones who were up for it. Which was almost all of \u2019em. As far as I can see, she never got rid of anybody.<\/p>\n

I somehow want to find a reason to fault her for this, but I can\u2019t find any. On this point, I think she was a Buddha. All the rest of us have to \u201cwork on accepting people as they are.\u201d The Buddha does not have to work on that.<\/p>\n

I need to read\u00a0Hermetic Definition<\/i>\u00a0much more closely. Her weird love-mind, age seventy or whatever, is on display there, and nowhere else. \u201cPerhaps I\u2019ll find some kind of clue, \/ So I can be a Buddha too.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n

Anthony Madrid\u00a0lives in Victoria, Texas.\u00a0His second book is\u00a0<\/em>Try Never<\/a>\u00a0(Canarium Books, 2017)<\/em>.\u00a0He is a correspondent for the\u00a0<\/em>Daily.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember: H.D. was more of a priestess than anything else. She was more priestess than lover, more priestess than thinker, more priestess than woman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22700],"tags":[30004,29998,689,29996,10670,29999,30000,30001,30003,3539,165,2047,17842,27877,30002,29997],"class_list":["post-113720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-correspondents","tag-bid-me-to-live","tag-collected-poems","tag-craft","tag-elen-in-egympt","tag-h-d","tag-hermetic-definition","tag-melodramas","tag-nights","tag-notes-on-h-d","tag-poem","tag-poetry","tag-poets","tag-prose","tag-rhyme","tag-tribute-to-freud","tag-trilogy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAnthony Madrid\u2019s H.D. Notebook (Part 2)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Remember: H.D. was more of a priestess than anything else. She was more priestess than lover, more priestess than thinker, more priestess than woman.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"H.D. Notebook, Part 2 by Anthony Madrid\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 9, 2017 \u2013 Remember: H.D. was more of a priestess than anything else. She was more priestess than lover, more priestess than thinker, more priestess than woman.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-08-09T15:00:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-08-10T21:03:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/hildadoolittlehd.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1884\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1434\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Anthony Madrid\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Anthony Madrid\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Anthony Madrid\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ff28732ebcbdac8b865bc16ad5887c2e\"},\"headline\":\"H.D. Notebook, Part 2\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-08-09T15:00:52+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-08-10T21:03:32+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/\"},\"wordCount\":2144,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/hildadoolittlehd-1024x779.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Bid Me to Live\",\"Collected Poems\",\"craft\",\"elen in Egympt\",\"H.D.\",\"Hermetic Definition\",\"melodramas\",\"Nights\",\"notes on H.D.\",\"poem\",\"poetry\",\"poets\",\"prose\",\"rhyme\",\"Tribute to Freud\",\"Trilogy\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Our Correspondents\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/\",\"name\":\"Anthony Madrid\u2019s H.D. Notebook (Part 2)\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/hildadoolittlehd-1024x779.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-08-09T15:00:52+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-08-10T21:03:32+00:00\",\"description\":\"Remember: H.D. was more of a priestess than anything else. She was more priestess than lover, more priestess than thinker, more priestess than woman.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/hildadoolittlehd.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/hildadoolittlehd.jpg\",\"width\":1884,\"height\":1434},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"H.D. Notebook, Part 2\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ff28732ebcbdac8b865bc16ad5887c2e\",\"name\":\"Anthony Madrid\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/549efa5a01d55301426f5af7f96efcdad383944e916201d24ebb62c4e26da542?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/549efa5a01d55301426f5af7f96efcdad383944e916201d24ebb62c4e26da542?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Anthony Madrid\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/anthony-madrid\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Anthony Madrid\u2019s H.D. Notebook (Part 2)","description":"Remember: H.D. was more of a priestess than anything else. She was more priestess than lover, more priestess than thinker, more priestess than woman.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"H.D. Notebook, Part 2 by Anthony Madrid","og_description":"August 9, 2017 \u2013 Remember: H.D. was more of a priestess than anything else. She was more priestess than lover, more priestess than thinker, more priestess than woman.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2017-08-09T15:00:52+00:00","article_modified_time":"2017-08-10T21:03:32+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1884,"height":1434,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/hildadoolittlehd.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Anthony Madrid","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Anthony Madrid","Est. reading time":"11 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/"},"author":{"name":"Anthony Madrid","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ff28732ebcbdac8b865bc16ad5887c2e"},"headline":"H.D. Notebook, Part 2","datePublished":"2017-08-09T15:00:52+00:00","dateModified":"2017-08-10T21:03:32+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/"},"wordCount":2144,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/hildadoolittlehd-1024x779.jpg","keywords":["Bid Me to Live","Collected Poems","craft","elen in Egympt","H.D.","Hermetic Definition","melodramas","Nights","notes on H.D.","poem","poetry","poets","prose","rhyme","Tribute to Freud","Trilogy"],"articleSection":["Our Correspondents"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/","name":"Anthony Madrid\u2019s H.D. Notebook (Part 2)","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/hildadoolittlehd-1024x779.jpg","datePublished":"2017-08-09T15:00:52+00:00","dateModified":"2017-08-10T21:03:32+00:00","description":"Remember: H.D. was more of a priestess than anything else. She was more priestess than lover, more priestess than thinker, more priestess than woman.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/hildadoolittlehd.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/hildadoolittlehd.jpg","width":1884,"height":1434},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/09\/h-d-notebook-part-2\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"H.D. Notebook, Part 2"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ff28732ebcbdac8b865bc16ad5887c2e","name":"Anthony Madrid","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/549efa5a01d55301426f5af7f96efcdad383944e916201d24ebb62c4e26da542?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/549efa5a01d55301426f5af7f96efcdad383944e916201d24ebb62c4e26da542?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Anthony Madrid"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/anthony-madrid\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113720"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113911,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113720\/revisions\/113911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}