Literary landmark in Bethlehem named in honor of Hilda Doolittle

CHRIS SHIPLEY/THE MORNING CALL /
Josh Berk, Executive Director of the Bethlehem Area Public Library, introduce the plaque as the spot where the childhood home of Hilda Doolittle once stood was declared a literary landmark on Friday in Bethlehem. An honor bestowed by United for Libraries, Doolittle was an early 20th century writer celebrated for her experimental writing and was considered a leading modernist poet.
CHRIS SHIPLEY/THE MORNING CALL /
Josh Berk, Executive Director of the Bethlehem Area Public Library, introduce the plaque as the spot where the childhood home of Hilda Doolittle once stood was declared a literary landmark on Friday in Bethlehem. An honor bestowed by United for Libraries, Doolittle was an early 20th century writer celebrated for her experimental writing and was considered a leading modernist poet.
MORNING CALL FILE PHOTO
Hilda Doolittle.
CHRIS SHIPLEY/THE MORNING CALL /
The spot where the childhood home of Hilda Doolittle once stood was declared a literary landmark on Friday in Bethlehem. An honor bestowed by United for Libraries, Doolittle was an early 20th century writer celebrated for her experimental writing and was considered a leading modernist poet.
CHRIS SHIPLEY/THE MORNING CALL /
The spot where the childhood home of Hilda Doolittle once stood was declared a literary landmark on Friday in Bethlehem. An honor bestowed by United for Libraries, Doolittle was an early 20th century writer celebrated for her experimental writing and was considered a leading modernist poet.
CHRIS SHIPLEY/THE MORNING CALL /
Amardeep Singh, English Professor at Lehigh University, reads the poem that Garden as the spot where the childhood home of Hilda Doolittle once stood was declared a literary landmark on Friday in Bethlehem. An honor bestowed by United for Libraries, Doolittle was an early 20th century writer celebrated for her experimental writing and was considered a leading modernist poet.
CHRIS SHIPLEY/THE MORNING CALL /
Lehigh University Professor Seth Moglen talks to attendees as the spot where the childhood home of Hilda Doolittle once stood was declared a literary landmark on Friday in Bethlehem. An honor bestowed by United for Libraries, Doolittle was an early 20th century writer celebrated for her experimental writing and was considered a leading modernist poet.
CHRIS SHIPLEY/THE MORNING CALL /
Amardeep Singh, English Professor at Lehigh University, reads the poem that Garden as the spot where the childhood home of Hilda Doolittle once stood was declared a literary landmark on Friday in Bethlehem. An honor bestowed by United for Libraries, Doolittle was an early 20th century writer celebrated for her experimental writing and was considered a leading modernist poet.
CHRIS SHIPLEY/THE MORNING CALL /
Scott Gordon, Lehigh University English Professor, reads from The Gift as the spot where the childhood home of Hilda Doolittle once stood was declared a literary landmark on Friday in Bethlehem. An honor bestowed by United for Libraries, Doolittle was an early 20th century writer celebrated for her experimental writing and was considered a leading modernist poet.

PUBLISHED: September 8, 2017 at 6:00 p.m. | UPDATED: June 2, 2018 at 7:49 p.m.

So you may say,”Greek flower; Greek ecstasy reclaims for ever one who died following intricate song’s lost measure.”

– H.D.

Hilda Doolittle barely spent her childhood in Bethlehem, her residence then forgotten and eventually razed to make way for City Hall and the library more than 50 years ago.

But her early experiences of the Moravian community would have a profound effect on the pioneer poet who helped launch the modernist movement.

Scholars, fans and others gathered Friday at the Bethlehem Area Public Library to remember Doolittle and dedicate a plaque that names the spot near where her home once stood. The plaque is now one of 160 literary landmarks named by United for Libraries.

To commemorate the event, Lehigh University scholars read excerpts from her memoir, “The Gift,” and her poems “Garden,” “Helen” and “The Flowering of the Rod.”

“I think H.D. is not only the greatest literary figure to come from the city of Bethlehem,” Lehigh English professor Seth Moglen said, referring to Doolittle by her pen name, “I think H.D. is really one of the greatest visionaries of our city.”

Doolittle was among the early 20th-century poets who branded their work “imagism.” Imagist poets such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, broke from Victorian tradition and wrote in free verse, creating clear images with precise and concise language.

Doolittle would later outgrow imagism, writing epic poems, novels and essays that achieved critical acclaim. In 1960, Doolittle became the first woman to win the American Academy of Arts and Letters medal.

While she labored over many of her prized poems and other writings abroad, Doolittle was born in and spent her first 10 years in Bethlehem. Those formative experiences, scholars say, influenced her writing as she challenged patriarchy and contemplated the origins of war.

She was born on Sept. 10, 1886, to Helen (Wolle) Doolittle, whose Bethlehem roots go back nearly to its 1741 founding, and Charles Doolittle, a Lehigh astronomy and math professor. She left Bethlehem at age 10 when her father accepted a job at the University of Pennsylvania.

As a young woman, Doolittle went abroad where she wrote among a group of like-minded poets as they forged the tenets of imagism. She married poet Richard Aldington, whom she later divorced, and raised her child with her longtime partner, writer Annie Winifred Ellerman, whose pen name is Bryher.

In 1961, Doolittle suffered a stroke and died in Zurich at 75. Her ashes were returned Oct. 28, 1961, to a family plot in Nisky Hill Cemetery in Bethlehem. Her epitaph includes lines from one of her poems.

Overshadowed in the male-dominated canon during her lifetime, Doolittle has been rediscovered by academics in recent decades as they study her work through the lens of feminism.

Pennsylvania recognized her in 1982 with a historical marker where her childhood home once stood on Church Street.

nicole.mertz@mcall.com

Twitter @McallBethlehem

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