HD (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) wrote Hermetic Definition at the height of her poetic powers. With her celebrated War Trilogy ('The Walls Do Not Fall', 'Tribute to the Angels', and 'Flowering of the Rod'), it transcends her earlier purist style, achieving a range accessible only to a major poet. HD, because of her early association with the Imagist movement, particularly with Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, F. S. Flint, and T. S. Eliot, has long been regarded as the exquisite miniaturist, the Imagist par excellence. But her real achievement is in the poems and prose of her maturity, where her technique and rhythms expand to deal with an awareness not only of perfection but also, in the face of painful experience - the War and personal hardship - of perfection's passing.
