Product Description

Customer Reviews (7)

collecxted poems of Robert Lowell
Not having read Robert Lowell's poems previously, I was delighted with their acessiblity and being a Boston area resident, I enjoyed their local references.I think I had hesitated to read another "confessional" poet having had my fill of Plath, but Lowell is very different and poem after poem pleased me.

A Tribute, Not a Review
I studied with Robert Lowell at Harvard in 1963 & 1964. I wouldn't presume to review his Collected Poems, only to testify that he was a giant of a human -- witty, sensitive even toward brash young would-be poets, immensely knowledgeable, immensely conscientious. Having known him remains one of the great privileges of my life. Reading his poems is a great privilege for all of us.

In His Exasperating Wholeness
The publication of this book was doubtless necessary to begin understanding Lowell correctly.Creator and destroyer, careful wordsmith and subversive deconstructor, encountering just one of his volumes along the strange parabola of his career can be confusing.Lowell always set out to carefully craft each of them, with special attention to the arrangement of his resonant poems and their slow, grand, building cumulative effect.To let you know the game, Lowell presented almost each of his volumes with an evocative frontpiece engraving by Francis Parkman -- the poet thus visually setting forth each of his works, in advance of his death, as another controlled chess move against the great opponent Fame -- the act of a control fanatic if there ever was one.

Yet somewhere in the middle of Lowell's career of creating the little volumes, more violently toward the end of his years as diseases took over, the mad Doppleganger Cal (Lowell's nickname to his insider pals) enters, seeds the serene clouds with fury, and all hell breaks loose. At worst, all is botched:mere beautiful poetic scraps, a line or two amongst literary gossip for insiders, yesterday's obnoxious news.In hindsight Cal indeed did a pretty good job; it is easier to just turn away from the mess.But Lowell is so good at his best, so earnest even in his madness, that we are going to miss something significant about our own history -- the subject which most deeply concerned him -- if we do.And finally, even at his worst, there is always something very endearing about this voice, something very human and honest.Lowell was plagued with true and furious organic disorders which disrupted his personality; his issues were not only self-inflicted.In an earlier age he would not have lived out the length of career he did; in significant ways, then, his voice is a truly new one on the block.Unfortunately for him, the hyped up madness of his period identified with his genuine madness and made a pathetic celebrity of him, which didn't help the brave and fragile personality struggling to make poetic sense of a disturbed time.

Bidart has picked up the pieces and presented Lowell as one, that's all, in all his exasperating wholeness.Now it is easier to see that Lowell and Cal were one, that the lasting work of worth emerges from their furious wrestling.Over time he was many kinds of a writer and a poet, and certainly not all of them will last.He left some absolute foolishness he only got away with because of his name and the looniness at large which seized on him about the same time it seized on Batman and Laugh-In -- junk like the plays in the Old Glory.But when you remember that this was a truly sick man and not just another boozed out writer, you wonder at the absolute clarity of the best work, and the occasional glimmers which never entirely disappeared.Doubtless much later, a generation free of the diseases we still to a degree share with this poet will make the appropriate selection.In the meantime, in a real sense, the record Bidart has compiled shows that the bell tolls for us, too.

A Masterful Collection (and very well-edited)
I believe that Lowell's work is best viewed through this expansive collection. No single book of his poetry truly captures the full breadth of his literary accomplishments. Of course, if you're only looking for an introduction to his work, Life Studies or For the Union Dead would probably do.

But if you really want to understand the full scope of his talent, then this book is indispensable. I would even go so far as to say that this book will probably cement Lowell's place among America's finest poets in years to come.

Collected Poems by Lowell
This is an excellent work in belles lettres literature.
The author covers a range of poems from history, nature,
geography, the elements, voyages, portraits and the four
seasons. He writes in a fine English tradition worthy
of serious literary review and critique. Here are samples:
"I took the preacher's text
too much for Gospel truth:
"In the light of your eyes, rejoice and have your wish!"

or

"In the verse coming next he serves another dish;
What are childhood and youth but vanity and vice?"

How about a quotation from the poem "Autumn"!

"Shaking , I listen for the word to fall;
building a scaffold makes no deafer sound.
Each heartbeat knocks my body to the ground,
like a slow battering ram crumbling a wall."

Lowell's poetry is both informative and relaxing. It is recommended for general reading or as collegiate literary
critique. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

this is all you need
I know that the new Collected Poems has recently arrived, and it is a massive tome. But you don't really need it. Most of what Lowell wrote after "For the Union Dead" isn't that great. And in the Selected you get a great selection from what is effectively Lowell's first book, Lord Weary's Castle--which is a pretty strong book. There is also a generous selection from Life Studies and For the Union Dead (though I've bought the book that contains both complete collections). Lowell was a pretty important poet, but really, the Collected just goes overboard. This is all you really need.

Get the new 'Collected Poems' instead
I made the mistake of getting this edition just as the new COLLECTED POEMS OF ROBERT LOWELL (edited by Frank Bidart) was coming out.The new book has all the notes, introductory biographical info (Lowell writes about his life as if you already know about it) and additional Lowell that THE SELECTED POEMS lacks.

However, if you want to go cheap (or don't need notes) this is not a bad 'Selected Poems'.It's fairly comprehensive, yet not too long -- and it gives you a good sense of the poet.It's been all people had for years (other than buying each of his many books).I think with the new COLLECTED, however, it has probably run its course.

Shared reading experience
This is a good book. The revised edition (which this is) contains a wideand well-chosen selection of Lowell's poetry. He notes in the foreword thathe tried to choose possible sequences rather than just greatest hits out ofcontext. This effort is visible and the book flows together like almost onebook instead of a career's overview.

What was interesting for me as Iread it was that I was reading a used copy which was liberally marked upwith underlines and notes of various kinds. Normally, this drives me crazyand as it was in pencil I began by first erasing five pages worth of notesand then reading on myself. Gradually, however, about one third through thebook I noticed that whoever it was that had owned the book before shared alot of tastes with me. I started enjoying his/her remarks and notitions andit felt like I was having a little conversation about the book.

Theformer owner underlined without comment the line where Lowell comments he"lies to friends and tells the truth in print". He circled the"Long Summer" sequence titles and placed an awed exclamationpoint after Lowell's poem for Ford Madox Ford. We both, apparently love"Margaret Fuller Drowned" as it rated one of only three poemsmarked with a star in the whole book.

It was a wonderful book, and whilethis shouldn't be construed as license to mark up books (I still find it abarbaric habit), it was also a good conversation. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (9)

On Lowell's Twin Peaks of the 50's/60's
Life Studies and For the Union Dead are two of Robert Lowell's most accomplished books and are also very representative of his style during what might be called his "middle period." This period involved a shift away from the use of regular meter and regular rhyme as well as a shift away from the New Critical elements in his earlier poems (which were often more impersonal and more carefully crafted).

In my humble opinion, the combined publication of these two volumes also represents Lowell's most successful attempts at combining his earlier, New Critical influences (poet/critics like Allen Tate and T. S. Eliot) with more liberal literary influences (like poets William Carlos Williams and Elizabeth Bishop).

Although many of the pieces in these volumes are successful, it's true that some aren't. For instance, the ponderous "91 Revere Street" is an extraordinarily tedious (and far too long) account of various scenes from Lowell's childhood in Boston.

However, this book contain more hits than misses, and some of these hits are truly masterful--for instance, "Skunk Hour," "For the Union Dead," "To Speak of Woe that is In Marriage," and "The Public Garden."

Still, despite all the hits that this volume contains, it won't give you a full picture of Lowell's abilities as America's pre-eminent, poetic chameleon who wrote in a wide variety of styles over the course of his long career.

So if this is the only Lowell book that you have read or are going to read, you won't get a sense of everything Lowell was capable of with a pen. And if that's what you're looking for, I would suggest the Selected or Collected Poems.

"For the Union Dead" - A Timeless Civil War Poem
I read this poem again on Martin Luther King Day, a fitting day for this poem, a tribute to the Union dead of the Civil War and a particular remembrance of the black soldiers who wore the uniform of the Union-- particularly of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment (made famous to non-Civil War students by the movie Glory several years ago).

The 54th Massachusetts was the first black regiment to march from the North to fight the Confederacy. These men were quite brave knowing that in battle they would likely get little or no quarter, and if captured they would most assuredly be sent south back to slavery. These men had much to prove, what with years of racism from North and South to be broken and defeated by their bravery and sacrifices-- not to mention the Confederate army that they would later face on the battlefield. They would win ever-lasting fame for their courage during their doomed assault on Fort Wagner at Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, July, 1863. The attack would be a night assault on this heavily guarded fort. The fighting would be intense and the 54th would not be successful. Their white colonel, Robert Gould Shaw would be killed, and almost half the regiment would be lost. The first Medal of Honor for a black man would be earned there.

They marched down Beacon Street, with the Massachusetts State House on one side and Boston Common on the other - off to war, off to death and glory on a twin mission; to fight for the Union and show the world that they were equal in ability to whites. Directly across the street from the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Street there now stands the brilliant monument by Augustus St. Gaudens, forever commemorating the 54th, the first black regiment and their white commander Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

This monument on Beacon Hill is one of the finest monuments of any kind in the United States. As a tribute to Shaw and the 54th it is unparalleled in the physical world; but in the emotional world, the world of poetry, Robert Lowell comes quite close. Lowell brilliantly describes the monument to the 54th and works it into the life of Boston that foremost of abolition cities of the North. Standing before the 54th monument on Beacon Hill, as the crowds walk swiftly by and the traffic speeds along past the State House, one can almost hear the men breath as they are forever frozen in bronze on their march south to battle. There are few monuments in bronze as lifelike as this one: it is an incredible tribute to the 54th and their commander and adorns the city of Boston as fittingly as the obelisk at Bunker Hill or the colonial historical sites of Adams, Revere, Hancock, and several miles to the west, Lexington and Concord.

Lowell's "For the Union Dead" is a successful poem on so many levels and succeeds completely where Tate's "Ode to the Confederate Dead" so totally fails. It unifies time and place, and brings context and permanence where everything seems to be shifting and changing. As a tribute to the 54th and the Union dead of the Civil War its elements run as deep as the waters off the coast of Boston seen from the top of Beacon Hill so long ago when the skyscrapers didn't block the view.

Having started his education at Harvard, Lowell transfered to Kenyon College to study under John Crowe Ransom another of Vanderbilt's Fugitives, like Allen Tate and Donald Davidson. It is an astounding thing that the two greatest Civil War poems of modern times ("Lee in the Mountains" and "For the Union Dead") and the worst ("Ode to the Confederate Dead") should be written by poets with Nashville connections. Lowell went on to graduate school to study under Robert Penn Warren, another Vanderbilt "Fugitive".

St. Gaudens placed a Latin inscription on the monument, the motto of the Society of the Cincinnati (a society of Revolutionary War officers started by George Washington and Henry Knox): "Relinquit Omnia Servare Rem Publicam". The translation is: "He left behind everything to save the Republic". Lowell opened his poem with this Latin phrase but changed the singular "he" to "they" in the Latin so that his poem would refer to all the men of the 54th not just its white commander, Robert Gould Shaw, to read: "Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam".

"For the Union Dead" was published in 1964 during the height of the Civil Rights movement. Active in Civil Rights efforts, it is perfectly understandable that Lowell should have written this poem of unity and appreciation with concern, too, that the past should be remembered and its lessons learned. The battlefield of Fort Wagner had been by then reclaimed by the sea at Charleston Harbor and the monument to the 54th had fallen into disrepair. In fact, it was during this time that the St. Gaudens monument had been removed and stored in a crate to prevent damage from "shaking" from the construction of the underground Boston Commons parking garage. So, the battleground is gone, and Shaw's monunument is gone (but only temporarily), and history fades while "progress" continues speedily obliterating the memory of those that have come before.

"The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year-
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . ."

Lowell's brilliant poem is his way of retaining the past and ensuring that important historical memory is not lost forever. The men of the 54th Massachusetts, black and white, were leaders in bringing an end to slavery and establishing equality under the law for blacks in America. The story of their bravery and sacrifice is important to understanding American history and the Civil War. These men demonstrated with their actions and their blood that they were equals and merited equal positions in American society. As Americans North and South we ought to continue to embrace their memory and appreciate the many challenges that they overcame and the lessons that they taught us with their sacrifices at Fort Wagner and elsewhere.

We can look back to the 54th Massachusetts as a standard bearer in the struggle for Civil Rights in America. In the 1980s, my husband was privileged to be part of an effort to restore the St. Gaudens monument to its original beauty and power. Lowell's poem is a tribute to this beautiful work of art, and the men of the 54th Massachusetts who so inspired it. It is our duty a to remember our past, appreciate and commemorate our war dead, and learn those lessons that they underscored for later generations with their lives.

"Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe."

This is one of the finest poems of the 20th century and stands with "Lee in the Mountains" as one of the two great modern poems of the Civil War.

Confessional Intensity, Disaffection, and Technical Brilliance
Robert Lowell's poetry is praised for its technical brilliance, metrical complexity, and verbal ambiguity. In an earlier review of Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle (awarded Pulitzer Prize of Poetry in 1947) I compared reading his poetry to studying mathematics, too advanced mathematics.

Furthermore, I am often uncomfortable with Lowell's disaffection, mistrust, and anger (one critic calls it apocalyptic rage) evident both in his criticism of contemporary society, and in his confessional topics such as marital difficulties, drinking problems, and mental illness.And yet I keep coming back to Lowell's work to savor his remarkable command of language.

Life Studies, a blend of prose and poetry, is more explicitly personal than his earlier work. The prose section, titled 91 Revere Street, is quite exceptional, not simply for its dispassionate candor, but for its literary excellence. Lowell is almost brutal in his depiction of himself as a boy, offering no excuses for his insensitivity toward others. He is no less severe with his parents. Lowell's portraits of his grandparents, aunts, and uncles were equally candid, but more sympathetic.

Lowell reserves his later difficulties, including struggles with mental illness, for his poetry. Waking in the Blue, a haunting picture of fellow patients in a mental hospital, is immediately followed by an unsettling description of Lowell's return to his family, Home After Three Months Away.Soft Wood, dedicated to Harriet Winslow, who "was more to me than my mother", is deeply moving.Other family poems - like Dunbarton, Grandparents, and Sailing Home from Rapallo - have a poignant beauty. I also liked Beyond the Alps, the first poem in Life Studies, which reappears with an additional stanza as one of the last poems in For the Union Dead.

For the Union Dead has a broader span, addressing social issues and historical subjects, as well as confessional topics, and is thus more similar to Lord Weary's Castle. Hawthorne, Jonathan Edwards in Western Massachusetts, Water, The Old Flame, and the title poem, For the Union Dead offer a good sampling of this work.

My own minority judgment Good but not great poems
The quality of a writer for us , it seems to me, is often defined by how much of ourselves we are willing to put into knowing their work. I read the poems in this collection, but am not tempted to reread them. They make sense and tell of Lowell's childhood, his relation to his father, his meditation on the way he first met his first wife and the way they have grown distant through the years, his sense of his grandfather's grandness as he takes him with him on a local tour, his friendships with other writers. I can read the poems and feel their meaning and sense quite clearly. This to my mind raises them above much poetic language which in many modern poetry writers does not have a context or a sense. Lowell does often tell a small story in his poem.
But there is for me , anyway, a certain absence of music , a certain lack of those kind of memorable lines I find in my beloved poets.
Reading other reviews of Lowell's poetry I see others see more in his work, feel it deeper than I do. They are the truer readers.

an american giant at his best
Robert Lowell is a giant in American poetry. He is pretty much unanimously considered one of the best of his generation. This book combines two of his volumes of poetry. One of those volumes is his masterpiece Life Studies--the reason why he is a giant in American poetry. This is his seminal work. No matter how you look at it, this is an important book of poetry. And an excellent book of poetry. Most of the poems are good and there are several phenomenal poems within. Life Studies alone belongs on any serious poetry connoisseur's shelf. Also in this book is arguably Lowell's second best collection (only Lord Weary's Castle might be better) For the Union Dead, which contains another masterpiece, "For the Union Dead" (and a favorite of mine "Hawthorne"). This is a book that poetry lovers of all kinds should have. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (4)

A couple like the Clintons
I'm with Elizabeth, when she snaps at Lowell that writing a good poem isn't worth hurting other people that much. I admit this book's art, and envy others' enjoyment of it, but what if you can't bear Lowell's personality and only read it for EB's sake? Much gnashing of teeth. They remind me eerily of another mismatched power couple, who are fond of each other when apart: Bill and Hilary Clinton. Lowell's sense of his own importance to poetry, which gives him the right to do anything he wishes to lesser mortals, is Bill-Clintonian. Lowell's as reckless, as destructive and self destructive, but also as charming to women. (Who are his profession, as much as poetry is.)It has been said, "Hilary loves Bill; and Bill loves Bill." Why can't such intelligent women see through these charming sociopaths? Think of Arendt and that creep Heidegger. Lowell is always running back to EB, crying like Brando in Streetcar. Difficult for a man to read, but if you're an intelligent woman with EB's weakness for "bad boys," then lady, be my guest.

bedtime reading
This has been my bedtime reading for a month now and what a lovely way to end the day.

They lived apart, continents apart, but close in spirit.Their letters are gossipy, smart, unguarded, critical of each others' work, supportive through triumphs and awful trials.They say things to each other that they never would have voiced aloud.(Sometimes they get catty, and mostly they are right.)

As their careers progress, you follow a poem by poem progression.The letters made me aware of the extent to which their poems were written in response to the work of the other, and the importance of their prose and translation to the poems for which they are now famous.

It's a nice book too, a good design, and a fine thing in hand.My only complaint is that the footnotes (which are fascinating) are printed in a tiny font that's almost too small for my tired eyes.

words in air
I may be regarded as prejudiced but I have long followed the life and poetry of Elizabeth Bishop.This book not only solidified by love of her work but extended it.

Love of Poetry
This correspondence is one long (nearly a thousand pages) love letter between two of the best poets of their generation. Both Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell were personally tortured by their demons (her was alcohol, his was manic-depression) and failed relationships. Though never lovers, their's was a marriage of the minds via the mail for thirty years. It is helpful, though not vital, that the reader be acquainted with their poetry -- the letters have more meaning and one can understand the fuss they had with their written creations. This definiative collection of their letters is a biography of their adult lives. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the first collection of Robert Lowell's poetry which reveals a writer of unmistakeable brilliance who has a profound insight into the human condition.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

an interesting selection
Giroux has selected an interesting group of work for Lowell's Collected Prose. There is writing on Frost, Bishop, Eliot, Berryman, among others. You get pieces of Lowell's 'autobiography' as well as some of his earliest writing (one of which was published in his school's paper). There are also two interviews and Lowell's letters to Presidents Roosevelt and Johnson. There is some really good stuff here, though I'll admit, unlike his classmate Jarrell, Lowell isn't always that great. Still, it wasn't a bad book. ... Read more

Product Description
Not quite translations--yet something much more, much richer, than mere tributes to their original versions--the poems in Imitations reflect Lowell's conceptual, historical, literary, and aesthetic engagements with a diverse range of voices from the Western canon. Moving chronologically from Homer to Pasternak--and including such master poets en route as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Rilke, and Montale--the fascinating and hugely informed pieces in this book are themselves meant to be read as "a whole," according to Lowell's telling Introduction, "a single volume, a small anthology of European poetry."
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The must-have collection of translations
Robert Lowell has had dramatic upswings and downswings in his reputation as a poet.Right now, thanks to the release of his COLLECTED POEMS, edited by Frank Bidart, he is experiencing another upswing.

What has never suffered in esteem is this collection, IMITATIONS, the most influencial of its type since Ezra Pound's TRANSLATIONS.Lowell has, in his own words, "been reckless with literal meaning, and labored hard to get the tone."As Pasternak said, in poetry, the tone is everything.Hence the title: imitations, not translations.

Of course, I know many of the originals of these and Lowell has not been reckless, at least not by my standards.Instead he has (often, but not always) taken the translation one step beyond the normal conversion and internalized the poems to himself and his own experiences.A colossal trick of ego?Perhaps."All my originals are important poems," he claims in his introduction.As if to dance upon the grave of Western poetry, the first imitation condenses THE ILIAD into 46 lines.But Lowell is much more respectful from there, and earns his faithfulness to the original poets in his own unique way.

I think he really has succeeded in making poems that equal the originals with a high percentage.He has also put his unmistakeable pissmark on them.George Steiner called them "creative echoes."Whatever they are, love 'em or hate 'em, they are a must read for all poets and translators, a sort of gauntlet thrown down upon the heads of Homer, Sappho, Heine, Villon, Baudelaire, Rilke, Montale, Pasternak et al.How should one go about translating any literature?This is one of the best points of departure. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (4)

Excellent!
This collection of Robert Lowell letters is an excellent supplement to Lowell's Collected Poems. Like the Collected Poems, this book is heavily annotated (which is a very good thing) and well-edited. The letters are divided into 8 sections, with each section covering a period of 5-7 years, and grouped according to major events or publications in Lowell's life.

The letters are fascinating and wonderfully written. With the annotation, they're also easy to follow, and you really get a sense of what it must have been like to be one of the poets in Lowell's inner circle. You also get an up-close and personal sense of Lowell as a human being: his ambitions, frustrations, and judgments are all very clearly spelled out.

I would highly recommend this book to any serious fan of Lowell's poetry.It would also be an excellent resource for anyone interested in the American poetry scene in the 1950's and 60's.

What Next?
Saskia Hamilton, a New York based poet, proves her mettle as an editor with this fat collection of Robert Lowell's letters.

He wrote great letters, and this surprised me a bit, but every one of them shows an insane desire to please, to flatter, to make the recipient feel good about himself or herself; he's marvelously attentive to nuance and knows exactly how to push the right buttons of his correspondents, telling them just what they want to hear.And he's sincere, which is a plus.Over and over again I was impressed by the facility with which he was blessed, or maybe he worked it up over time, because the earliest letters aren't that great, it's not until he gets into the 1940s that the familiar Lowell manner takes over.

This volume explains so much!Mostly how it was that, with all the truly awful things Lowell did, people still loved him.If it wasn't red-baiting the director of Yaddo and forcing the board to impeach her in 1947, it was publishing all those poems about Elizabeth and Harriet against their wishes, or it was wanting to marry Jackie Kennedy or whatever.Apparently all these were episodes of a manic nature in his bipolar disorder, including the car wreck that permanently disfigured wife #1 Jean Stafford.Well, of course none of them were really his fault but still.And now this book of letters unveils his real private voicem, gently coaxing reassuring, making sense of the world, interpolating, and penetrating the consciousness of whoever he was writing to at the time.The older and the famous got one style of letter; his peers got another.

Hamilton's notes are sparse, but seem sensible.However printing over 700 of these letters is out of control.Like the Bidart-edited POEMS, the book physically becomes too big to handle, it takes two strong men just to lift it off the shelf.Why so many?Plus, one gets the feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the letters go, and that in a year's time we may have the first of many annual sequels, "More Letters by Robert Lowell."Never underestimate how many times a manic genius (with, as he boasts, unearned income and lots of free time) will reach out to others to make himself heard and understood.The word is the life.

A great poet, but a of a prig
Robert Lowell was a great poet to be sure. These letters shine a bit of light on his non-public side. He is rude to his parents, snide in fact. In the 1st 2 sections he asks for money from them again and again, though he treats them as imbeciles and abuses them through his letters and in person. He boasts about his brilliance and believes that the path he is on will lead to fame, as it does. But at what price?
It is hard to like R. Lowell as a person. I had moments when I wanted to yell at him (crazy, huh?). I believe that we should sometimes settle for art rather than the artist.

Wonderful letters from a now-distant past
This big collection of letters is remarkable in so many ways. Lowell was a tireless and prolific correspondent and never dull. He expressed love, wonder, and a surprisingly cheerful interest in mundane things and events. He wrote, for example, to Elizabeth Bishop, congratulating her (somewhat self-consciously) on her weight loss, among many other achievements. To Elizabeth Hardwick (second of his three wives) he sent tender and intimately newsy letters - often with an ache.Randall Jarrell, another friend, received a letter that began "Lying awake in bed the other night after my reading, I thought of the joy of seeing you."

Lowell would have loved email: he complains every now and then about the slowness of the mails, especially between the US and Europe. He is by turns thrilling and everyday in these letters, and often tender and loving.

Much has been made posthumously of Lowell's bipolar disorder. It's sad and sweet to read his notes to his mother. After beginning "psycho-therapy" in the late 1940's he writes to her that "I've been trying to understand my first six or seven years, and have many questions to ask you." He is uncynical and open. After her death in 1954 (also documented in letters) he had a psychotic break during which, as ever, he wrote letters.

Editor Saskia Hamilton has arranged these chronologically so you can read them as a sort of a biography. This is a terrific window on Lowell and his world. ... Read more

Product Description
The last book published before the poet's death, Day by Day was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award prize for poetry in 1977 and cements Lowell's reputation as one of the great poetic voices of the century.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

One of the Best, Definitely a Re-read
I got this book in from the library, read it, found a many gems and was drawn to buy it. If you want a mature Lowell, you'll find it here. Includes 'Epilogue' and many others that will surely grow on you if not initially stun you with the epiphanic verse and strong insight. Truly, a pleasure. ... Read more

Product Description
A pivotal book in Robert Lowell's groundbreaking career, Notebook is, as Seamus Heaney has written, "a massive accumulation of unrhymed sonnets, poems of immeditae, unprepossessing, blunt-edged force, which record not so much the public events of [the late 1960s] as the reactions which the events provoked in Lowell's consciousness."
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

It's Been Years, but the residue...
...of this brilliant volume persists in mind.After all these months spent buried in other books, it's incredible that such lines as "off ering our leathery love/ we're fifty, and free!" stick with me.Lowell's descriptions of souls in Hell is unsettling, while he wears one vital influence (Fugitive John Crowe Ransom), while also tackling world unrest.

I will certainly be rereading this book.If there was ever a doubt as to Lowell's genius, it's cut apart by this and other staggering works.A must read. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
"One of the most promising young poet-critics in America" (Los Angeles Times) examines a revolutionary generation of poets.

Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, and Delmore Schwartz formed one of the great constellations of talent in American literature. In the decades after World War II, they changed American poetry forever by putting themselves at risk in their poems in a new and provocative way. Their daring work helped to inspire the popular style of poetry now known as "confessional." But partly as a result of their openness, they have become better known for their tumultuous lives—afflicted by mental illness, alcoholism, and suicide—than for their work. This book reclaims their achievement by offering critical "biographies of the poetry"—tracing the development of each poet's work, exploring their major themes and techniques, and examining how they transformed life into art.

An ideal introduction for readers coming to these major American poets for the first time, it will also help veteran readers to appreciate their work in a new light. 6 illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The Surgeon's Gift: Inspiration and Clarity
Adam Kirsch takes his title "The Wounded Surgeon" from T. S. Eliot's poem "East Coker":

"The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part."

In his introduction, Kirsch explains: "T.S. image evokes the resolve, not to say heroism, that these poets displayed by submitting their most intimate and painful experiences to the objective discipline of art. . . . But the suffering that afflicted this group of poets becomes significant only because they examined it with the surgeon's rigor, detachment, and skill" (p. xi).

Kirsch does the same--examines with "rigor, detachment and skill"--the body of these six poets' lives and works. His close readings deepen our understanding of how their lives and work intertwined, influenced, and yes, (as the subtitle says) transformed each other.

Lowell, Bishop, Berryman, Jarrell, Schwartz, and Plath never had a better reader--certainly not in one place. Each chapter illumines the other as Kirsch patiently explores his thesis and shows the rise and (and in the case of Schwartz) the fall of their talents.

Kirch shows their education and work in the context of the literary movements of the time--modernism and The New Criticism. These six poets scrambled a path through Moderism to a new form of poetic expression that would stamp itself on generations of poets to come. This new way of writing allowed the breath and messiness of life to come inside the poem, not be held aloof and at bay outside.

Personally, I especially enjoyed his chapter on Elizabeth Bishop ("Everything only connected by 'and'and 'and'") as Kirch elucidates Bishop's search to "contain loss in art, the scream in the clang." I came away with a profound appreciation of Bishop ascraftsperson (maker), poet, person, and woman...and, can now take these insights back to reading her work.

I also found inspiration and greater clarity for my own work from reading this book. What greater gift can a writer ask?

--Janet Grace Riehl,Sightlines: A Poet's Diary

This Derivative Book is Less than Groundbreaking
Anyone who has read the scholarship on these poets knows that there is really nothing original here.Either Kirsch has not done his homework, or, more likely, he has assimilated much of the relevant schoalrship without acknowedging it in this sparsely documented book.I was excited about this book because I thought it would bea good introduction to some good poets for the general reader.It may well be I'm not the audience for this book, but I noticed that most of the insights had been expressed before by others and more convincingly.This is middle-of-the-road, indeed middling, literary journalism.Kirsch's claims are modest, but he is not--he reinvents the wheel and passes it off as his own singular wisdom at his best and as the wisdom of the ages at his worst.

Not a poet or critic
I have little to no experience with poetry criticism and little appreciation for modern poetry. I was hoping this book would provide me with some education so I could appreciate poetry to a greater extent. Well, it did that and more. I found the book very interesting. Although a "dense" read (I read many sections more than once to understand them), I found it worth my time. I came away with an understanding of these poets and how to read their, and others', poetry. I found the analyses to be straightforward and not full of a lot of insider jargon. Although I have no sense of how much the author's comments are revisionist, repetitive of prior work, or new; I found them to be well-substantiated and supported by some wonderful examples of poems.

Poetic Purging
Adam Kirsch has written an interesting 'surgical procedure' in the THE WOUNDED SURGEON: he defends the so-called 'Confessional Poets' Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, and Delmore Schwartz whose work from 1940 through the 1970s, praising "the resolve, not to say heroism, that these poets displayed by submitting their most intimate and painful experiences to the objective discipline of art."

In clear and at all times illuminating prose Kirsch examines each of these six poets and relates the personal lives that influenced their major works.Not a gossip column this, but an erudite exploration of how pain and death and disappointment and tragedy of all manner drove these poets to validate their own sorrows and rage rather that imagining those feelings or assigning them to fictitious personages.

While most everyone knows the life and times and resulting poetry of Sylvia Plath (endless biographies and films have seen to that), few of the others' lives are understood. Kirsch sets the record straight and in doing so makes lucid some of the more obtuse works included in this book.

Some would argue that Kirsch's thesis goes on too long, but in getting into the minds and hearts of poets can be a lengthy process. Kirsch has done a fine job of study on these six poets and lets us see how their art transformed their lives by their confessional poetry. Grady Harp, June 05 ... Read more

Product Description
National Book Award nominee Paul Mariani offers a passionate, highly readable biography of one of America's great poets. Using many of Robert Lowell's unpublished letters as well as interviews with his friends and relatives, Mariani captures the greatness, humor, and heartbreak of this literary giant. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A poetic biography
This is truly a wonderful biography of a poet written by a poet.I found that MANY passages flow like poetry.If you are interested in Lowell and his times, you will not be able to put this book down.My favorite period is the mid-to late fifties in and around the New England area.It was an extremely fertile time: Richard Wilbur, Ann Sexton, Sylvia Plath and on and on.The country was coming out of the deadening 50's and moving on to the New Frontier 60's with all it's social and cultural upheavals. If you're a teacher of any grade, tell your students this book has somewhere in the neighborhood of 1400 footnotes.That might stop their complaints when they have to make ONLY 2 citations. More than 'just' a biographer, Mariani is himself, a writer and a poet, and he uses his skills deftly to bring Lowell to life.An excellent read!!!!!!!!

Excellent biography
Robert Lowell is condidered one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century; some rank him second only to Frost. His poetry, always extremely personal and frank, and displaying great technical skill (he wrote in strict classical forms; only late in life did he write in free verse), was highly praised and prized: he won three Pulitzers. A Catholic convert, later an agnostic, he wrestled mightily with the Creator in his work. He suffered 8 nervous breakdowns during his life and was married three times. During the 1960s, he was a visible participant in the anti-war movement. Mariani is an excellent writer himself and tells Lowell's life story, from the successes to the heartbreaks, interestingly and well.

Robert Lowell - Poet, Puritan, Prophet
Robert Lowell has always seemed to me to be just out of reach. I was too young to witness his poetry readings to the Washington crowds protesting the war in Vietnam. By the time I was set "Skunk Hour" in myfinal year of secondary schooling, Lowell had been dead for a half dozenyears. Based on Lowell's letters, poetry and critism and of those who knewhim; this work is an exhaustive and comprehensive account of the poet'spriveliged and frequently turbulent life. His three marriages arediscussed, as are his spell in jail,( as a Conscientious Objector)and hisnumerous admissions to psychiatric hospital due to manic depression. Fromhis aristocratic but dysfunctional childhood to his last years, the readeris made aware of Lowell's progression and prowess as a poet. Of fascinationtoo is his interactions with other great poets, most notably Frost, Poundand Eliot; the latter described as 'The Master', a mantle passed to Lowellon Eliot's death. "Lost Puritan" is illuminating and revealing,it will bring Lowell into reach for anyone who is an afficianado of hispoetry. A scholarly salute to the greatest poet of the second half of thetwentieth century. ... Read more

Product Description
Whether looming over public squares or dotting old battlefields, monuments certify a culture’spresent by securing its past and pledging its future. They embody exemplary persons or events and the shared ideals they stood for, prompting an obligation to keep those ideals standing now and forever. But monuments also exaggerate the staying power of civilizations and of art. In the second half of the twentieth century, postmodern critics often decried monuments not only for their pretensions and stiffness but also for their supposed role in perpetuating oppressive cultural conventions. Even so, many artists and thinkers of the same period tried to reimagine monuments in ways that were humbler and more provisional but still culturally confirming.

In Castings, Guy Rotella examines the work of five important poets who have engaged in that effort: Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, James Merrill, Derek Walcott, and Seamus Heaney. Considering their wider careers as well as particular poems—includingBishop’s "The Monument," Lowell’s "For the Union Dead," Merrill’s "Bronze," Walcott’s "The Sea Is History," and Heaney’s "In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge"—Rotella argues that these writers are less concerned with defending or condemning monuments than with pursuing ancient and current debates about the political, aesthetic, and broadly cultural issues that monuments condense. Among these concerns are the competing claims of life and art, persistence and change, meaning and meaninglessness, the self and society,and the governing and the governed.

Original and provocative, Rotella’s readings will make us ponder how the human impulse to build to last, to reify our culturally derived and ideologically driven faiths, might coexist with those other creeds of our place and time: relativism, multiculuralism, and diversity. ... Read more

Product Description
The twelve essays in this volume, by many of the most distinguished scholars in the field, offer a chronological review of Lowell's career as a poet. The book includes pieces on major works such as Lord Weary's Castle, Life Studies, For the Union Dead, "Skunk Hour", Notebook, the sonnets of 1969-73 as well as four essays devoted to Lowell's last complete and often neglected work, Day by Day. Essential reading for those interested in the writer who dominated post World War II poetry, the book will appeal to students of American literature and to more general readers as well. The divergent and controversial voices in these essays testify to radical disparities among Lowell's "endless experiments" and to the complexity and endurance of his work. ... Read more

Product Description
The everyday is what the prophetic poet focuses on, that is what fills him with rage, that is what he wants to transform

The first book to describe and analyze at length the prophetic voice and the everyday voice in postwar and contemporary American poetry. Nick Halpern's commentaries on the work of Robert Lowell, A.R. Ammons, James Merrill, Adrienne Rich, Jorie Graham, and Louise Glück, serve the reader with a fresh and original context in which to see their work, and Postwar American poetry as a whole. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

insightful, well written
I knew little about poetry before reading this book.When I was done, I knew much more and was inspired to read more.Halpern is insightful and thorough here.His sections of analysis are well structured AND exciting. I finished the book wishing he had written more. ... Read more