Trilogy: The Walls Do Not Fall; Tribute to the Angels; The Flowering of the Rod: Tribute to the Angels

This is one of the classics of the 20th century; it is her most beautiful and mature work.

H.D.'s "Trilogy" was written about the same time as Eliot's "Four Quartets." It's a shame H.D.'s war-poem/philosopy-poem isn't as well known as Eliot's. Eliot deals with time and timelessness--or the eternal within time--and while his verse is very seductive and beautifully interweaves the abstract and the concrete, it merely points to sublimity, never really reaches it. H.D.'s "Trilogy," really reaches it. There are many many epiphanies made concrete, and her very simple but shattering verse actually takes you to them. This is a marvelously fluent poem. Yes, there are allusions, but they are simple and bonus, rather than essential. It is one of those poems that is quite clear immediately, yet repays reading after reading. It's a pity so few current poets write with such depth and breadth--to say nothing of such passion.

Poems of angels and gems and fragrance and stars, all written on the downward slope of WWII. H.D. praises the life that survives, the mythic returns of Amen-Ra and Christ, which is also the first budding of spring. London joins in these poems with Karnak and St. John's second city, Paradise--a resurrection of "our earth before Adam," that "grain or seed/opened like a flower." Angels and Magi bring their usual good news, but the last word belongs to Mary Magdalene and the goddesses behind her, shifting from Isis to Venus to H.D. herself. The thick web of allusions reads at times like a parody of Modernist excess, but the impulse behind them (and these were written quickly, after a long dry spell) is more inspired than erudite. H.D. improvised a religion of her own that enfolded the War like a shell, tranforming its destruction to a promise of new life. "Trilogy" is a quiet testament to her faith in writing as redemption, the poet as witness and priest.