A rare pattern, poet Amy Lowell (1874–1925) was born on this day in Brookline, Massachusetts, into a prestigious family. Lowell carried both privilege and fire, and chose to spend that power on art.

Inspired by the poetry of John Keats, Lowell published her first volume, Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, in 1912. In Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds (1914), Lowell wrote, “All books are either dreams or swords.”

Lowell became a leading voice of Imagism, a movement devoted to concrete words and clear images, shaped into free verse that Lowell called “unrhymed cadence.” The work prized precision over ornament, meaning over flourish.

“Employ always the exact word, not the nearly-exact,” Lowell urged, drawing on years of study in Oriental art. Lowell experimented with 17-syllable haiku poems and edited a collection of Chinese poetry, honoring brevity, attention, and the power of a single clean line.

In the posthumously published collection What’s O’clock, Lowell asked, “Do we want laurels for ourselves most,/Or most that no one else shall have any?” That collection earned Lowell the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for innovative “new poetry,” praised for technical skill and strong voice.

Bold craft endures.