Out of line

This work relates nonlinear narrative in H.D.s late long poems in three historical contexts: Melanie Klein's psychoanalysis of children (Trilogy), the revolutionary film aesthetic of Sergei Eisenstein (Helen in Egypt), and African decolonization (Hermetic Definition). Drawing on archival materials, biography, war journalism and theoretical source texts, the author argues that the visionary politics of H.D.'s long poems cannot be reconciled with the feminist agendas currently attributed to them. Out of line with radical and reactionary agendas alike, H.D.'s poems problematize, even as they solicit, feminists attempts to invest women's literature with the powers of prophecy and social redemption.