This short poem is included in Amy Lowell's 1919 collection of poems, "Glimpse of Life," and is written in the form of a haiku. Haiku is a Japanese classical short poem composed of seventeen syllables. It originates from the two Japanese poetry forms of renge and haiku. This form is similar to the couplets of modern Chinese poetry. Strictly speaking, Lowell's "Autumn" has the concise form and elegant style of haiku, but it lacks the implicit style of haiku and has few symbols and metaphors. Overall, this poem embodies Lowell's efforts to innovate American poetry by absorbing nutrients from Japanese and Chinese ancient poetry.
This poem uses fallen leaves as the material, and uses concise strokes to outline the unique poetic flavor of autumn when the fallen leaves are falling. The first two lines of the poem indicate that the time span of the narrative is "one day." Many things happen in a day, but falling leaves best reflect the seasonal nature of autumn, which caters to the "seasonal language" characteristic of Haiku. In the last two sentences, the poet extracted the specific situation of "under the moonlight" and expressed the characteristics of fallen leaves in more delicate strokes: "Each leaf is edged with silver." Not only that, this beautiful The picture has also become a classic scene fixed in the minds of readers. In this picture, which lacks the rich colors of oil painting but is a bit more complicated than traditional Chinese painting, we seem to see a character who is listening attentively and contemplating. She stood quietly in front of the "Purple Grape Vine" for the entire day, not squinting. We don't know whether there are turbulent thoughts in her quiet gaze, but this lonely image shocks the reader's soul, even more impactful than the picture itself. Her loneliness is just like Amy. Lowell himself.
As a woman, Lowell endured more mental torture than ordinary women. Although this obese, sickly, never-married old girl struggled to break away from the fetters imposed on women by her family and society, she was never able to gain true spiritual freedom. The biggest fetter she faced was her lonely soul, and even some critics Calling her desireless body the source of her loneliness and misfortune. This kind of loneliness prevents her from going deep into life, and her poems are superficial. This rhetoric is based on Fuluo Deyin's "libido" theory. Theodore Maynard once commented unceremoniously on Amy Lowell: Her writing is not based on life. What she conveys when facing flowers, plants and trees is seemingly natural. The emotion is actually a disguise. However, we cannot deny Lowell's achievements simply because of her physical background. The flowers, plants and trees she described are so concise and concise, constructing flexible and vivid images, and through this she strives to convey the emotions and concepts behind things. She believes that poetry is a high-level summary and condensation of emotions, and literary forms such as poetry are also transcendent forms of real life. This song "Autumn" reflects this effort. The reason why we cannot experience strong emotions in these simple words is because the edge of the scenery she describes and the image of fallen leaves overwhelms the emotion itself. However, smart readers can still discover the hidden emotions behind this image, "All day long I watched the leaves of the purple grape vine/falling into the water." This lonely character and his quiet and profound soul cannot but arouse our sympathy and speculation.