The Usual Star and the Moment: Stories

Two little-known story collections from H.D. that offer
new ways of thinking about the role of the short story genre in the writer’s
career and the modernist movement

The Imagist poet H.D.
is widely regarded as one of the most innovative writers of free verse in
English. In the last few decades, her poetry and novels have received increasing
scholarly attention, but her short prose has rarely been studied. Until now, many
of her short stories have been inaccessible for readers, either long out of
print or never having been published.

In this volume,
Lara Vetter introduces two short story cycles by H.D.--The Usual Star,
which comprises two stories, ＂The Usual Star＂ and ＂Two Americans＂; and The
Moment, which contains the stories ＂Hesperia,＂ ＂Aegina,＂ ＂The Moment,＂
＂Jubilee,＂ ＂The Last Time,＂ ＂The Death of Martin Presser,＂ and ＂The Guardians.＂
Presenting these two collections in their entirety alongside a critical
introduction and explanatory notes that frame the stories in their historic,
literary, and social context, this volume argues for the serious study of
H.D.’s work in this genre.

The stories
featured in these collections were written between the 1920s and 1940s,
offering an opportunity to study the format as it evolved in H.D.’s thought and
practice. This edition situates the stories, some biographically based, within
the larger arc of H.D.’s life and career. H.D.’s short stories offer a glimpse
into the art and experiences of a queer woman writer of the modernist era.

H.D. (born Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) was an American expatriate writer whose work exerted enormous influence on modernist poetry and prose. Lara Vetter is professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the author of A Curious Peril: HD’s Late Modernist Prose and the editor of H.D.’s By Avon River.