Adalaide Morris

H.D.'s "Fortune Teller"

READERS FOLLOWING the track of H.D.s writings will inevit ably move in the direction of New Directions. One might begin with their handsome new edition of H.D.s Collected Poems, 1912-1944 and then proceed through their three longstanding editions of H.D.s late poems: Trilogy, Helen in Egypt, and Hermetic Definition. Or one might move from the novel HERmione to the autobiographical Tribute to Freud and then to End to Torment, her tribute to Ezra Pound. Sooner or later, however, all H.D.s readers will come upon a slim book with a black cover whose crescent moon shines over the title The Gift. Written as the bombs fell over London between 1941 and 1943, this is H.D.s brilliant autobio graphical fantasy?or fantastical autobiography?the story of a childhood which gave her a gift of vision powerful enough to transmute even the dark and random terrors of war.