Sea Rose is a poem by the American poet Hilda Doolittle, who wrote as “H.D.” The poem was first published in 1915, in the anthology Some Imagist Poets. The following year, it was included in Sea Garden, Doolittle’s first collection. “Sea Rose” focuses on the qualities of a single natural object in the “garden” of living things around the sea. The poem uses sparse language and simplified poetic structure to describe the “harsh” rose of the sandy sea-edge.
Rose, harsh rose, marred and with stint of petals, meager flower, thin, sparse of leaf, more precious than a wet rose single on a stem— you are caught in the drift. Stunted, with small leaf, you are flung on the sand, you are lifted in the crisp sand that drives in the wind. Can the spice-rose drip such acrid fragrance hardened in a leaf?
Hilda Doolittle is best known for her leading role in the Imagist movement of the early 1900’s. The Imagists developed new forms and rhythms to create poetic pictures with words. They used the language of natural speech and precise, direct images to free poetry from personal emotion and sentiment. H.D. is considered the poet whose work most consistently illustrated the principles of Imagism. In “The Sea Rose,” Doolittle focuses on the suggestive properties of a single object. She uses selective description and occasional repetition to illustrate her concentrated, aesthetic perception—that is, perception based on beauty rather than on practical or moral considerations.
H.D. was also influenced by the work of the ancient Greek and Roman poets. From them, she developed the classical ideals of formal precision and concise expression. Some critics described H.D. as the living example of a successful modernist classicist. Later in her career, she wrote verse-dramas in the classical tradition and won acclaim for her translations of ancient Greek plays.
For more information about Doolittle, see Doolittle, Hilda. See also American literature (Modernist poetry).
