Robert Lowell

Robert Lowell (March 1, 1917–September 12, 1977), born Robert Traill Spence Lowell, Jr., was an American poet whose works, confessional in nature, engaged with the questions of history and probed the dark recesses of the self. He is generally considered to be among the greatest American poets of the twentieth century.

Life

Lowell was born into the Boston Brahmin Lowell family, and he was raised in an extremely wealthy, and extremely strict, household. He attended Harvard University but transferred to Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, from which he graduated, to study under the great American critic and poet, John Crowe Ransom. While at Kenyon College Lowell also met and befriended the poet and critic Randall Jarrell, another ardent student of Ransom who was to be a lifelong influence on Lowell's poetry. After graduating from Kenyon in 1940, Lowell married the novelist Jean Stafford and converted to Catholicism. Lowell would later abandon his Catholic beliefs, but his Catholicism influenced his first two books, Land of Unlikeness (1944) and Lord Weary's Castle (1946). Lord Weary's Castle would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize. Both books display Lowell's early style, characterized by extreme complexity and dense symbolism, as well as a masterful use of rhyme and meter. Among the most memorable poems of these early works is "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket", which was written as an elegy for Warren Winslow, Lowell's cousin, who had drowned at sea during the course of the Second World War. "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket" is notable for its extensive references to Herman Melville—Lowell was a great admirer of Melville's poetry, and he helped to bring Melville's talents as a poet to critical light—the poem is long, too long for quotation, but an excerpt shall give the reader a sense of Lowell's quality as a poet in these early years:

"The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket"

Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air and the beasts and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.

I.

A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket,-

The sea was still breaking violently and night

Had steamed into our north Atlantic Fleet,

when the drowned sailor clutched the drag-net. Light

Flashed from his matted head and marble feet,

He grappled at the net

With the coiled, hurdling muscles of his thighs;

The corpse was bloodless, a botch of red and whites,

Its open, staring eyes

Were lusterless dead-lights

Or cabin-windows on a stranded hulk

Heavy with sand. We weigh the body, close

Its eyes and heave it seaward whence it came,

Where the heel-headed dogfish barks at its nose

On Ahab's void and forehead; and the name

Is blocked in yellow chalk.

Sailors, who pitch this at the portent at the sea

Where dreadnoughts shall confess

It's hell-bent deity

When you are powerless

To sand-bag this Atlantic bulwark, faced

By the earth-shaker, green, unwearied, chaste

In his steel scales; ask for no Orphean lute

To pluck life back. The guns of the steeled fleet

Recoiled and then repeat

The hoarse salute

II.

Whenever winds are moving and their breath

Heaved at the roped-in bulwarks of this pier,

Then terns and sea-gulls tremble at your death

In these waters. Sailor, can you hear

The Pequod's sea wings, beating landward, fall

Headlong and break on our Atlantic wall

Off 'Sconset, where the yawing S-boats-splash

The bellbuoy, with ballooning spinnakers,

As the entangled, screeching mainsheet clears

The blocks: off Madaket, where lubbers lash

The heavy surf and throw their long lead squids

For blue-fish? Sea-gulls blink their heavy lids

Seaward. The winds' wings beat upon the stones,

Cousin, and scream for you and the claws rush

At the sea's throat and wring it in the slush

Of this old Quaker graveyard where the bones

Cry out in the long night for the hurt beast

Bobbing by Ahab's whaleboats in the East.

During World War II Lowell chose to be a conscientous objector; he was appalled by the Allied bombings of civilians and refused to take any part in the war effort. Because of this he was convicted of conscientious objection and sentenced to serve a year in prison; on good behavior he was released in five months, and his experiences in prison would later be depicted in the pomes "In the Cage" and "Memories of West Street and Lepke". In 1948 Lowell's marriage with Jean Stafford disintegrated, and the couple divorced. A year later, in 1949, he married the writer Elizabeth Hardwick, and the new couple left the United States to spend several years abroad in Europe.

In the 1960s, Lowell became a media personality, befriending such celebrities as Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy, Mary McCarthy, Father Berrigan and Eugene McCarthy. He was also actively protesting against the Vietnam War.

Lowell was hospitalized approximately 20 times for acute mania, underwent shock therapy, and characterized one of his manic episodes as a "magical orange grove in a nightmare." However it would be wrong to characterize Lowell as a "mad" poet, since these were generally episodes that were interruptions to his work, rather than the reasons for his work.

In 1970 he left Elizabeth Hardwick for the British author, Lady Caroline Blackwood. He spent much of his last years in England. Lowell died in 1977, suffering a heart attack in a cab in New York City, and is buried in Stark Cemetery, Dunbarton Center, New Hampshire.

His collected works were published in 2003 and his letters in 2005, indicating a renewed interest in the poet.

Writing

Lowell reached wide acclaim for his 1946 book, Lord Weary's Castle, a reworking of his first book, Land of Unlikeness. Among the most famous poems in the volume are Mr Edwards and the Spider and The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket. Lord Weary's Castle was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1947.

The 1951 volume The Mills of the Kavanaughs was considered inferior to the earlier volume, despite such fine poems as Falling Asleep over the Aeneid and Mother Marie Therese, but Lowell's reputation was renewed with Life Studies from 1959.

His earlier poetry belonged to the formalist school of poetry, but with Life Studies, Lowell developed a style that would soon be labeled "confessional" poetry.

Life Studies includes the oft-reprinted poem "Skunk Hour," a poem that is primarily a description of a fading New England town, punctuated by two stanzas of what was, at the time, shocking personal confession, such as the declaration, "My mind's not right." Other confessional poems in the volume include Memories of West Street and Lepke and My Last Afternoon with Uncle Deveraux Winslow. It also includes the prose memoir 91 Revere Street. Life Studies is widely viewed as one of the most influential and important books of poetry in the 20th century.

Lowell followed Life Studies with a volume of loose translations of poems by, among others, Rilke and Rimbaud, Imitations, for which he received the 1962 Bollingen Poetry Translation Prize.

For the Union Dead, 1964, was also widely praised, particularly for its title poem, which invokes Allen Tate's Ode to the Confederate Dead. Following this book, however, many critics began to find Lowell's poetry collections becoming more inconsistent.

During 1967 and 1968 he experimented with a verse journal, published as Notebook, 1967-68. These poems loosely based on the sonnet were reworked into three volumes. History deals with public history from antiquity onwards, and with modern poets Lowell had known; For Lizzie and Harriet describes the breakdown of his second marriage; and The Dolphin, which won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize includes poems about his marriage to Caroline Blackwood and their life in England.

A minor controversy erupted when he incorporated private letters from his second wife, Elizabeth Hardwick into For Lizzie and Harriet. He was particularly criticized by his friends, Adrienne Rich and Elizabeth Bishop, for this.

Lowell won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1947 and 1974, and the National Book Award for poetry in 1960.

Works

• Land of Unlikeness (1944)
• Lord Weary's Castle (1946)
• The Mills of The Kavanaughs (1951)
• Life Studies (1959)
• Phaedra (translation) (1961)
• Imitations (1961)
• For the Union Dead (1964)
• The Old Glory (1965)
• Near the Ocean (1967)
• The Voyage & other versions of poems of Baudelaire (1969)
• Prometheus Bound (1969)
• Notebook (1969) (Revised and Expanded Edition, 1970)
• For Lizzie and Harriet (1973)
• History (1973)
• The Dolphin (1973)
• Selected Poems (1976) (Revised Edition, 1977)
• Day by Day (1977)
• Collected Poems (2003)

Trivia

• The lyrics of the They Might Be Giants song "Robert Lowell" are taken entirely from the poem "Memories of West Street and Lepke" by Robert Lowell (although they have been "recontextualized" by They Might Be Giants for rock music purposes). The song was featured on a CD accompanying issue #6 of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern featuring letters from a young Robert Lowell.

External links

• Articles on Lowell at Modern American Poetry
• 1982 Audio Interview with Ian Hamilton, author of the biography, Robert Lowell - RealAudio
• Lowell's interview with The Paris Review

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Robert Lowell  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Robert Lowell"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.