She lived as a socialite and travelled widely, turning to poetry in 1902 (aged 28) after being inspired by a performance of Eleonora Duse in Europe.

Russell is the subject of many of Lowell's more erotic works, most notably the love poems contained in 'Two Speak Together', a subsection of Pictures of the Floating World.

Lowell has been linked romantically to writer Mercedes de Acosta, but the only evidence of any contact between them is a brief correspondence about a planned memorial for Duse.

An additional group of uncollected poems was added to the volume The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell, published in 1955 with an introduction by Untermeyer, who considered himself her friend.

Her book Fir-Flower Tablets was a poetical re-working of literal translations of the works of ancient Chinese poets, notably Li Tai-po (701–762).

Lowell wrote of Keats: "the stigma of oddness is the price a myopic world always exacts of genius.

"[10]: 62  Examples of these love poems to Russell include the Taxi, Absence, A Lady [22]: xxi  In a Garden, Madonna of the Evening Flowers,[23] Opal,[24] and Aubade.

[25] Lowell admitted to John Livingston Lowes that Russell was the subject of her series of romantic poems titled "Two Speak Together".

[26][27] Lowell's poems about Russell have been called the most explicit and elegant lesbian love poetry during the time between the ancient Sappho and poets of the 1970s.

[25] Most of the private correspondence in the form of romantic letters between the two were destroyed by Russell at Lowell's request, leaving much unknown about the details of their life together.

Within the realm of literature, though, she spoke highly of contemporary female poets such as Edna St. Vincent Millay.

[28] She also drew inspiration from her female predecessors in poetry; her poem "The Sisters" explores in depth her thoughts on Sappho, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Emily Dickinson.

Additional sources of interest in Lowell today come from the anti-war sentiment of the oft-taught poem "Patterns"; her personification of inanimate objects, as in "The Green Bowl", and "The Red Lacquer Music Stand"; and her lesbian themes, including the love poems addressed to Ada Dwyer Russell in "Two Speak Together."