Robert Lowell Books

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 great collected poems by one of America's masterful minor poets. Much to see and enjoy. Great for any poet who wishes to apprentice himself to someone with a subtle and sophistaced understanding of the English language and a wide and nuanced emotional range. Sturdy hardback volume. Will last an entire lifetime.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lowell is of the vanguard of American twentieth century poets, a man who created many brilliant works other than the two joined in this volume. In such poems in Life Studies as Beyond the Alps and A Mad Negro Soldier Confined in Munich, as well as his portraits of various friends and family, we discover a man capable of both acid humor and outright sadness. However, in Life Studies, these excellent poems are overshadowed by the towering biographical essay 91 Revere Street. In this touching memoir, Lowell describes distant, illustrious relatives, Amy Lowell being a famous but ostracized example, friendships wrecked in childhood, disquietude over a girlfriend who soils herself in class (in his embarrassment, Lowell sits in it), his formative years on the periphery of polite, conservative Bostonian society, and his fathers coarse, difficult superiors and buddies that cropped up in the father's job with the Navy. Though his poems here are outstanding, an uncomfortable question arises when one considers this essay: Would Lowell have been better off to employ his time as a prose stylist, not a poet?

For the Union Dead validates Lowell's decision to declare poetry his mode of expression. Poems such as the dolorous My Last Evening with Uncle Devereaux Winslow and Terminal Days at Beverly Farm expose a man groping for hope after the deaths of close relatives; Waking in the Blue and Myopia: A night explore, respectively, Lowell's mental illness and attendant three month hospitalization, and a night of insomnia that becomes a maelstrom of tortured reflections and half-hewn thoughts; The Drinker explores alcoholism as a product of foiled love, with a question as to whether pathology or sheer carelessness and love of idleness is the underlying shibboleth. Water, the poem that stoked my love for Lowell, uses a maritime theme to express sorrow over a lost love. Beyond the Alps, from Life Studies, is reprised here with an elided stanza reinserted at the behest of coeval John Berryman.

Lowell is one of those poets so gifted, so erudite, so steeped in classical literature, it's hard to grasp that, as he explains it, he was "less rather than more bookish than most children." Much of the isolation evinced in Lowell's poetry, as well as the restlessness of his life, both as youth and adult, are radiantly eviscerated in these two collections.

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.

If you like contemporary poetry this is the book for you. The wide range of styles contained in the book is amazing. It revived my own desire and ability to write. It is the perfect companion to Six American Poets. I can not wait for Conarroe's next work.

Ah, a fine comparison and contrast in studies on the eight best American confessional poets ever. Kudos to the editor on a fine choice of poems, and candid biographies on each poet. Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg, John Berryman, Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop and the other guy, here's to you.

"Eight American Poets," edited by Joel Conarroe, is a fine anthology. The introduction notes that this book was "designed as a companion volume to 'Six American Poets,'" also edited by Conarroe. "Eight" follows the same plan as "Six": rather than anthologize a huge company of poets who are represented by only a few pieces each, each of Conarroe's books focuses on a relatively small group of poets, each of whom is represented by a substantial selection. Conarroe's approach allows the reader to get a fuller feel of each poet in the anthology format.

The poets of "Eight" are Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsburg, and James Merrill. Each poet's work is prefaced by a substantial individual introduction.

There are many masterpieces in this book. Curiously, I found the most compelling poems to be those that focus on nature: Roethke's "The Meadow Mouse," Bishop's "The Fish," Plath's "Mushrooms," and Merrill's "The Octopus." Poems like these combine skillfully used language with keen insight, and reveal these poets to be true heirs of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson (two of the featured artists in "Six American Poets").

Overall, I felt that "Eight" was not as strong as its sister volume, "Six." Although there are many poetic masterpieces in "Eight," there is also much material which, in my opinion, hasn't aged well. The so-called "confessional poetry" of some of these writers strikes me as overwrought. Some of the longer poems failed to resonate with me. I was particularly disappointed by Berryman's "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet," especially since I am an admirer of Anne Bradtreet's own work. Admittedly, this criticism may merely reflect my own personal tastes, but I submit it for the reader's consideration.

The fact that so many of these poets either wrote about each other, or pop up in the editor's introductions to each others' work, sometimes gives the book as a whole a creepy, incestuous feel. And the fact that so many of these poets committed suicide, had long-term mental health problems, and/or suffered from addictions further gives the book as a whole a rather morbid feel. On second thought, maybe this group of eight is a bit problematic!

Still, editor Conarroe has assembled an impressive anthology that I would recommend for students and teachers, as well as to a general readership. Although a mixed bag, "Eight American Poets" contains some truly enduring work by an octet whose legacy is secure.

For someone just coming into an appreciation of poetry-somewhat suspiciously like myself-Conarroe's anthology approach is perfect: concentrate on just a few major poets and provide an introduction to each and a generous sampling of their poetry.

I have owned this book for several years now and it introduced me to what are now some of my favorite poets (Elizabeth Bishop, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell). It is a book that I go back to time and time again, and I encourage anyone to include it in their collection.

Jeremy W. Forstadt

.........the best known and loved poetry of eight well-known twentieth century American poets. Includes well known poems such as Bishop's "The Fish", Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz", Berryman's "Dream Songs", Merrill's "Lost in Translation", Sexton's "Ringing the Bells", and many others.

Like Conarroe's "Six American Poets", the anthology introduces us to each poet with a short biography that is presented before the poet's work. We learn about their lives and come to understand some of the primary forces that have shaped their poetry. I have found that this greatly enriches the experience of reading poetry because I better see the struggles that lead to each individual creation. After each collection, Conarroe offers a list of books and anthologies where each poet has been published so that we, should we wish, can come to know the work of a given poet much better.

This anthology is a wonderful starting place for someone who, like me, desires an introduction to some of the greatest American poetry ever produced. Personally, I feel, after reading this anthology that I have come to truly appreciate the work of Elizabeth Bishop and Theodore Roethke, in particular. I had never known their work well, but suddenly each jumped off the page at me, Bishop for her wonderfully vivid descriptions and Roethke for his intensely moving subjects. Plath and Sexton also really spoke to me, their work so reflecting their lives. Overall, this anthology is superbly worthwhile reading!

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!!!!!!!!

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 my final year of secondary schooling, Lowell had been dead for a half dozen years. Based on Lowell's letters, poetry and critism and of those who knew him; this work is an exhaustive and comprehensive account of the poet's priveliged and frequently turbulent life. His three marriages are discussed, as are his spell in jail,( as a Conscientious Objector)and his numerous admissions to psychiatric hospital due to manic depression. From his aristocratic but dysfunctional childhood to his last years, the reader is made aware of Lowell's progression and prowess as a poet. Of fascination too is his interactions with other great poets, most notably Frost, Pound and Eliot; the latter described as 'The Master', a mantle passed to Lowell on Eliot's death. "Lost Puritan" is illuminating and revealing, it will bring Lowell into reach for anyone who is an afficianado of his poetry. A scholarly salute to the greatest poet of the second half of the twentieth century.

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.

Ably edited for a contemporary readership by Karen Robert, New Year In Cuba: Mary Gardner Lowell's Travel Diary, 1831-1832 recounts the journey of a twenty-nine year old wife, her young son, and her husband on a journey to the island nation of Cuba. Mary Gardner Lowell's astute observations are peppered with gossip, humor, criticism, scandal, and stories of arrogance and danger. New Year In Cuba is highly recommended as being an engaging and vivid transport through time and space in a yesteryear travelogue adventure.

I first read this journal in its original format: a handwritten, early-19th-century document now kept in the archives at the Massachusetts Historical Society. I loved it on the first reading--Lowell is an articulate, insightful writer who recorded this journey for her friends and family back home in Boston. (Just as we take snapshots of a trip, 19th-century travelers wrote journals.) Now we can all read it without making a trip to the research library in Boston.

A well-educated, well-read woman, Lowell drew on a wealth of knowledge and considerable skill as a writer, but she was also somewhat more irreverent than she should have been, according to the conventions of the time. She took note of the local gossip, the scandalous histories of some of her hosts, and the harsh treatment of slaves on the sugar plantations. It makes for an engrossing read.

Professor Robert's introduction provides the historical context for the journal, covering the Boston background as well as the Cuban information.

When I was in college I read a collected edition of the poems of Robert Lowell and its pages amazed me. They were like nothing I'd ever read before. I was completely inspired, but knew that his genius was something one could not easily approach. It's actually a good feeling though because it's nice to be reminded of the heights to which we can aspire. That being said I knew very little about the specifics of his life apart from the fact that he had experienced several breakdowns and spent time in a mental hospital.

The brilliance of Lowell's poetry is what caused me to purchase Hamilton's biography. Mr. Hamilton is an outstanding writer in his own right and this is a finely crafted narrative. Some readers may not appreciate this author's extensive use of primary source materials, but I think it's a strength overall. Allowing those who knew the man to give their accounting--via private letters and published works--provides readers with the most telling portrait of a subject's life and times. Length wise this volume was perfect.

As far as Lowell goes, this narrative (which is the truth) thoroughly knocks him off the pedestal. He spent a good bit of his life paralyzed by mental illness and was a burden to both friends and family. His is an ugly tale. His relationships were a horror show and Lowell was very lucky that he kept the associations he did given his bizarre and occasionally malicious behavior. Hamilton's biography also has value as a testament to the growth of modern psychiatry. How easy it is to forget that only a few decades ago bipolar disorder was a thoroughly debilitating illness one often leading to imprisonment, confinement in an institution, and an early death. Thank God for lithium along with all the drugs that have evolved in the time since.

This book, in addition to being a well written and entertaining biography, can give insight into the complexities of having a family member with Manic Depression.

As a former student of Barbara Estrin at Stonehill College, I hear her loud and clear in this her newest work. As a social activist, her perspective and insight into this noteworthy subject deserves close study and reflection. The connections Estrin makes between literature and these historic yet tragic events provides an interesting view of our world. Estrin challenges each of us to not only look deep within literature, but she forces us to confront new and disturbing reader responses that further our appreciation of her subject. Today I realize what a honor it was to have taken courses with this skilled scholar.

"With admirable clarity the authors- all highly regarded in their respective fields- present the clinician with a supremely readable text. The emphasis here is pragmatic, although there is sufficient pathogenesis and physiolgy to provide a fine balance."- from the Journal of the Medical Association

"A practical book designed for clinicians of all specialties who care for immunocompromised patients. It is a resource book that provides useful information and can also serve as a starting point for an immediate diagnostic or theraputic strategy."- from Immunology Today

"The editors and contributors are to be commended for their commitment to the challenge of providing a practical summary of the developmennts so rapidly expanding a field."- from ASM News

"A very good book indeed and can be recommended"- from The Lancet

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.

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.