Claiming “I, too, am an Imagiste,” Amy Lowell traveled to London in 1913 to meet the poets of the fledgling movement defined by Ezra Pound’s comments on “Imagism” in the January edition of Poetry magazine. For many critics, Lowell’s trips to London in 1913 and 1914 are the starting place for discussions of her life and career as both poet and spokesperson for the “new poetry, ” and her enthusiastic (financial as well as moral) support for the movement prompted Pound to cynically rename the movement “Amygism” and to disengage himself from it. Stories of male critics’ and poets’ contempt for Lowell’s attempts to insert herself into the poetry market abound. Yet, Lowell herself seems to have been fascinated by this moment as well. The collection that she published just after her return from London, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, refigures the “London moment” from Lowell’s perspective, using the title poem, as well as the entire collection, to construct an origin myth in defense of her poetic “calling.” In the title poem, Lowell, in the persona of a young man, receives a gift of discernment and dreams in a mystical encounter with a word merchant. The poem’s myth serves both as guiding principle for the collection and apology for her project of opening up the Imagist movement to a more “democratic” and holistic involvement of all its members. Using terms borrowed from both Max Weber’s thoughts on work and charismatic leadership, and from more contemporary gender theorists on constructions of masculinity, this essay will read Lowell’s poem as an attempt to become heroic by becoming masculine, thereby presenting an alternative to Pound’s more autocratic model of masculinity.