Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell | |
---|---|
Born | Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV March 1, 1917 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Died | September 12, 1977 New York City, U.S. | (aged 60)
Resting place | Stark Cemetery Dunbarton, New Hampshire, U.S. |
Occupation | Poet |
Education | Harvard University Kenyon College (BA) |
Period | 1944–1977 |
Genre | American poetry |
Literary movement | Confessional poetry |
Notable works | Lord Weary's Castle Life Studies For the Union Dead The Dolphin (1973) |
Spouse | Caroline Blackwood (m. 1972) |
Children | 2 |
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (/ˈloʊəl/; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the Mayflower. His family, past and present, were important subjects in his poetry. Growing up in Boston also informed his poems, which were frequently set in Boston and the New England region.[1] The literary scholar Paula Hayes believes that Lowell mythologized New England, particularly in his early work.[2]
Lowell stated, "The poets who most directly influenced me ... were Allen Tate, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Carlos Williams. An unlikely combination! ... but you can see that Bishop is a sort of bridge between Tate's formalism and Williams's informal art."[3] Lowell wrote in both formal, metered verse as well as free verse; his verse in some poems from Life Studies and Notebook fell somewhere in between metered and free verse.
After the publication of his 1959 book
He was appointed the sixth
Life
Family history
Lowell was born to
His mother was a descendant of
As well as a family history steeped in
Early years
As a youth, Lowell had a penchant for violence and bullying other children.[8][12]
Describing himself as an 8½-year-old in the prose piece "91 Revere Street", Lowell wrote that he was "thick-witted, narcissistic, thuggish".[13] As a teenager, Lowell's peers gave him the nickname "Cal" after both the villainous Shakespeare character Caliban and the tyrannical Roman emperor Caligula, and the nickname stuck with him throughout his life.[14] Lowell later referenced the nickname in his poem "Caligula", first published in his book For the Union Dead and later republished in a revised sonnet version for his book, Notebook 1967–1968.[15]
Lowell received his high school education at St. Mark's School, a prominent prep school in Southborough, Massachusetts. There he met and was influenced by the poet Richard Eberhart, who taught at the school, and as a high school student, Lowell decided that he wanted to become a poet. At St. Mark's, he became lifelong friends with Frank Parker, an artist who later created the prints that Lowell used on the covers of most of his books.[16]
Lowell attended Harvard College for two years. While he was a freshman at Harvard, he visited Robert Frost in Cambridge and asked for feedback on a long poem he had written on the Crusades; Frost suggested that Lowell needed to work on his compression. In an interview, Lowell recalled, "I had a huge blank verse epic on the First Crusade and took it to him all in my undecipherable pencil-writing, and he read a little of it, and said, 'It goes on rather a bit, doesn't it?' And then he read me the opening of Keats's 'Hyperion', the first version, and I thought all of that was sublime."[17]
After two years at Harvard, Lowell was unhappy,[18] and his psychiatrist, Merrill Moore, who was also a poet, suggested that Lowell take a leave of absence from Harvard to get away from his parents and study with Moore's friend, the poet-professor Allen Tate who was then living in Nashville and teaching at Vanderbilt University.[8]
Lowell traveled to Nashville with Moore, who took Lowell to Tate's house. Lowell asked Tate if he could live with him and his wife, and Tate joked that if Lowell wanted to, Lowell could pitch a tent on Tate's lawn; Lowell then went to Sears to purchase a tent that he set up on Tate's lawn and lived in for two months.[19][20] Lowell called the act "a terrible piece of youthful callousness".[20]
After spending time with the Tates in Nashville (and attending some classes taught by
Partly in rebellion against his parents, Lowell converted from Episcopalianism to Catholicism.[22] After Lowell graduated from Kenyon in 1940 with a degree in Classics, he worked on a master's degree in English literature at Louisiana State University and taught introductory courses in English for one year before the U.S. entered World War II.[8][23]
Political engagement
Lowell was a
While at Yaddo in 1949 Lowell became involved in the Red Scare and accused then director, Elizabeth Ames, of harboring communists and being romantically involved with another resident, Agnes Smedley. If Ames were not fired immediately, Lowell vowed to "blacken the name of Yaddo as widely as possible" using his connections in the literary sphere and Washington. The Yaddo board voted to drop all charges against Ames.[citation needed]
Lowell's letter to the president was his first major political act of protest, but it would not be his last. During the mid to late 1960s, Lowell actively opposed the Vietnam War.[12]
In response to American air raids in Vietnam in 1965, Lowell rejected an invitation to the White House Festival of the Arts from President
In 1968, Lowell publicly supported the Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president in a three-way primary against Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. Lowell spoke at numerous fundraisers for McCarthy in New York that year, but "[his] heart went out of the race" after Robert Kennedy's assassination.[31]
Teaching
From 1950 to 1953, Lowell taught in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, together with Paul Engle and Robie Macauley.[6][32] Later,
In 2012, Spivack also published a book, With Robert Lowell and His Circle, about her experience studying with Lowell at Boston University in 1959. From 1963 to 1970, Lowell commuted from his home in New York City to Boston to teach classes at Harvard.[5]
Scholar Helen Vendler attended one of Lowell's poetry courses and wrote that one of the best aspects of Lowell's informal style was that he talked about poets in class as though "the poets [being studied] were friends or acquaintances". Hamilton quoted students who stated that Lowell "taught 'almost by indirection', 'he turned every poet into a version of himself', [and] 'he told stories [about the poets' lives] as if they were the latest news.'"[35]
Influences
In March 2005, the
During the 1960s, Lowell was the most public, well-known American poet; in June 1967, he appeared on the cover of
Relationships
Lowell married the novelist and short-story writer
Lowell had a close friendship with the poet Elizabeth Bishop that lasted from 1947 until Lowell's death in 1977. Both writers relied upon one another for critiques of their poetry (which is in evidence in their voluminous correspondence, published in the book Words in Air: the Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell in 2008) and thereby influenced one another's work.[51] Bishop's influence over Lowell can be seen at work in at least two of Lowell's poems: "The Scream" (inspired by Bishop's short story "In the Village") and "Skunk Hour" (inspired by Bishop's poem "The Armadillo"), and the scholar Thomas Travisano notes, more broadly, that "Lowell's Life Studies and For the Union Dead, his most enduringly popular books, were written under Bishop's direct influence."[52][53][54]
Lowell also maintained a close friendship with Randall Jarrell from their 1937 meeting at Kenyon College until Jarrell's 1965 death. Lowell openly acknowledged Jarrell's influence over his writing and frequently sought out Jarrell's input regarding his poems before he published them. In a letter to Jarrell from 1957, Lowell wrote, "I suppose we shouldn't swap too many compliments, but I am heavily in your debt."[55]
Mental illness
Lowell was hospitalized many times throughout his adult life due to bipolar disorder, the mental condition then known as "manic depression".[56] On multiple occasions, Lowell was admitted to the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and one of his poems, "Waking in the Blue", references his stay in this large psychiatric facility.[57] While bipolar disorder was often a great burden to the writer and his family, it also provided the subject for some of Lowell's most influential poetry, as in his book Life Studies.[58] When he was fifty, Lowell began taking lithium to treat the condition. Saskia Hamilton, the editor of Lowell's Letters, notes, "Lithium treatment relieved him from suffering the idea that he was morally and emotionally responsible for the fact that he relapsed. However, it did not entirely prevent relapses... And he was troubled and anxious about the impact of his relapses on his family and friends until the end of his life."[59]
Death
Lowell died from a heart attack in a taxicab in Manhattan on September 12, 1977, at the age of 60, while on his way to see his ex-wife, Elizabeth Hardwick.[60] He was buried in Stark Cemetery in Dunbarton, New Hampshire.[61]
Writing
1940s
Lowell's early poetry was "characterized by its Christian motifs and symbolism, historical references, and intricate formalism."
Lowell's first book of poems, Land of Unlikeness (1944) was also highly influenced by Lowell's conversion to Catholicism, leading Tate to call Lowell "a Catholic poet" in his introduction to the volume.[63] The book was published by a small press as a limited edition, but still received some "decent reviews" from major publications like Poetry and Partisan Review.[12][64]
In 1946, Lowell received wide acclaim[65][66][67][68] for his next book, Lord Weary's Castle, which included five poems slightly revised from Land of Unlikeness and thirty new poems. Among the better-known 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 in 1947. That year, Lowell also was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.[5]
Randall Jarrell gave Lord Weary's Castle high praise, writing, "It is unusually difficult to say which are the best poems in Lord Weary's Castle: several are realized past changing, successes that vary only in scope and intensity--others are poems that almost any living poet would be pleased to have written ... [and] one or two of these poems, I think, will be read as long as men remember English."[65]
Following soon after his success with Lord Weary's Castle, Lowell served as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1947 to 1948 (a position now known as the U.S.
1950s
In 1951, Lowell published
The poems in Life Studies were written in a mix of free and metered verse, with much more informal language than he had used in his first three books.
1960s
Lowell followed Life Studies with Imitations (1961), a volume of loose translations of poems by classical and modern European poets, including
Also in 1961, Lowell published his English translation of the French verse play Phèdre by 17th century playwright Jean Racine.[6] Lowell changed the spelling of the title of the play to Phaedra. This translation was Lowell's first attempt at translating a play, and the piece received a generally positive review from The New York Times. Broadway director and theater critic Harold Clurman wrote that Lowell's Phaedra was "a close paraphrase of Racine with a slightly Elizabethan tinge; it nevertheless renders a great deal of the excitement--if not the beauty--which exists in the original." Clurman accepted Lowell's contention that he wrote his version in a meter reminiscent of Dryden and Pope, and while Clurman conceded that the feel of Lowell's version was very different from the feel of French verse, Clurman considered it to be like "a finely fiery English poem," particularly in passages where "Lowell's muse took flame from Racine's shade."[80]
Lowell's next book of original verse
In 1964, Lowell also wrote three one-act plays that were meant to be performed together as a trilogy, titled The play was published in its first printing in 1965 (with a revised edition following in 1968).
In 1967, Lowell published his next book of poems, Near the Ocean. With this volume, Lowell returned to writing more formal, metered verse. The second half of the book also shows Lowell returning once again to writing loose translations (including verse approximations of
Pity the planet, all joy gone
from this sweet volcanic cone;
peace to our children when they fall
in small war on the heels of small
war—until the end of time
to police the earth, a ghost
orbiting forever lost
in our monotonous sublime.
–From "Waking Early Sunday Morning,"
Near the Ocean (1967)
During 1967 and 1968, Lowell experimented with a verse journal, first published as Notebook 1967-68 (and later republished in a revised and expanded edition, titled Notebook). Lowell referred to these fourteen-line poems as
In the Notebook poems, Lowell included the poem "In The Cage," a sonnet that he had originally published in Lord Weary's Castle. He also included revised, sonnet versions of the poems "Caligula" and "Night-Sweat" (originally published in For the Union Dead) and of "1958" and "To Theodore Roethke: 1908-1963" (originally published in Near the Ocean). In his "Afterthought" at the end of Notebook 1967-1968, Lowell explained the premise and timeline of the book:
This is not my diary, my confession, not a puritan's too literal pornographic honesty, glad to share private embarrassment, and triumph. The time is a summer, an autumn, a winter, a spring, another summer; here the poem ends, except for turned-back bits of fall and winter 1968 ... My plot rolls with the seasons. The separate poems and sections are opportunist and inspired by impulse. Accident threw up subjects, and the plot swallowed them--famished for human chances. I lean heavily to the rational, but am devoted to surrealism.[88]
In this same "Afterthought" section, Lowell acknowledges some of his source materials for the poems, writing, "I have taken from many books, used the throwaway conversational inspirations of my friends, and much more that I idly spoke to myself." Some of the sources and authors he cites include Jesse Glenn Gray's The Warriors, Simone Weil's Half a Century Gone, Herbert Marcuse, Aijaz Ahmad, R. P. Blackmur, Plutarch, Stonewall Jackson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.[88]
Steven Gould Axelrod wrote that, "[Lowell's concept behind the sonnet form] was to achieve the balance of freedom and order, discontinuity and continuity, that he [had] observed in [Wallace] Stevens's late long poems and in John Berryman's Dream Songs, then nearing completion. He hoped that his form ... would enable him 'to describe the immediate instant,' an instant in which political and personal happenings interacted with a lifetime's accumulation of memories, dreams, and knowledge."[89] Lowell liked the new form so much that he reworked and revised many of the poems from Notebook and used them as the foundation for his next three volumes of verse, all of which employed the same loose, fourteen-line sonnet form.
In 1969, Lowell made his last foray into dramatic work with the publication of his prose translation of the ancient Greek play
1970s
In 1973, Lowell published three books of sonnets. The first two, History and For Lizzie and Harriet, consisted of revised and reordered versions of sonnets from Notebook. History included poems that primarily dealt with world history from antiquity up to the mid-20th century (although the book did not always follow a linear or logical path and contained many poems about Lowell's friends, peers, and family). The second book, For Lizzie and Harriet, included poems that described the breakdown of his second marriage and contained poems that were supposed to be in the voices of his daughter, Harriet, and his second wife, Elizabeth. Finally, the last work in Lowell's sonnet sequence, The Dolphin (1973), which won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize, included poems about his daughter, his ex-wife, and his new wife Caroline Blackwood whom he had affectionately nicknamed "Dolphin." The book only contained new poems, making it the only book in Lowell's 1973 sonnet trilogy not to include revised and reordered poems from Notebook.
A minor controversy erupted when Lowell admitted to having incorporated (and altered) private letters from his ex-wife, Elizabeth Hardwick into poems for The Dolphin. He was particularly criticized for this by his friends Adrienne Rich[91] and Elizabeth Bishop.[56] Bishop presented Lowell with an argument against publishing The Dolphin. In a letter to Lowell regarding The Dolphin, dated March 21, 1972, before he'd published the book, Bishop praised the writing, saying, "Please believe that I think it is wonderful poetry." But then she stated, "I'm sure my point is only too plain ... Lizzie [Hardwick] is not dead, etc.--but there is a 'mixture of fact & fiction' [in the book], and you have changed [Hardwick's] letters. That is 'infinite mischief,' I think ... One can use one's life as material--one does anyway--but these letters--aren't you violating a trust? IF you were given permission--IF you hadn't changed them ... etc. But art just isn't worth that much."[92] Adrienne Rich responded to the controversy quite differently. Instead of sending Lowell a private letter on the matter, she publicly criticized Lowell and his books The Dolphin and To Lizzie and Harriet in a review that appeared in the American Poetry Review and that effectively ended the two poets' long-standing friendship.[93] Rich called the poems "cruel and shallow."[94]
Lowell's sonnets from the Notebook poems through to The Dolphin met with mixed responses upon publication, and critical consensus on the poems continues to be mixed. Some of Lowell's contemporaries, like
Lowell published his last volume of poetry,
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Posthumous publications
In 1987, Lowell's longtime editor, Robert Giroux, edited Lowell's Collected Prose.[107] The collection included Lowell's book reviews, essays, excerpts from an unfinished autobiography, and an excerpt from an unfinished book, tentatively titled A Moment in American Poetry.[108]
Lowell's Collected Poems, edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter, was published in 2003. The Collected Poems was a very comprehensive volume that included all of Lowell's major works with the exception of Notebook 1967-1968 and Notebook. However, many of the poems from these volumes were republished, in revised forms, in History and For Lizzie and Harriet. Soon after the publication of The Collected Poems, The Letters of Robert Lowell, edited by Saskia Hamilton, was published in 2005. Both Lowell's Collected Poems and his Letters received positive critical responses from the mainstream press.[109][110][111]
Tributes
In 2001, the alternative rock band They Might Be Giants wrote and recorded a song called "Robert Lowell" which uses Lowell's poem "Memories of West Street and Lepke" as the basis for the lyrics.[112][113]
Lowell's friendship with Elizabeth Bishop was the subject of the play Dear Elizabeth by Sarah Ruhl which was first performed at the Yale Repertory Theater in 2012.[114] Ruhl used Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell as the basis for her play.[115]
Lowell was a featured subject in the 2014 HBO documentary The 50 Year Argument about The New York Review of Books which Lowell and his second wife, Elizabeth Hardwick, were both involved in founding. Although Lowell was not involved with editing the review, he was a frequent contributor. Lowell is featured in voice-over, photographs, video, and Derek Walcott reads from an essay on Lowell that Walcott published in The New York Review of Books after Lowell's death.[116]
Bibliography
- Land of Unlikeness (1944)
- Lord Weary's Castle (1946)
- The Mills of The Kavanaughs (1951)
- Life Studies (1959)
- Phaedra (translation) (1961)
- Imitations (1961)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864 (limited edition keepsake of centenary commemoration of Hawthorne's death), Ohio State University Press (1964)
- For the Union Dead (1964)
- The Old Glory (1965)
- The Achievement of Robert Lowell: A Comprehensive Selection of His Poems, edited and introduced by William J. Martz, Scott, Foresman (1966)
- Near the Ocean (1967)
- R. F. K., 1925-1968 privately printed limited edition (1969)
- Notebook 1967-1968 (1969) (revised and expanded as Notebook, 1970)
- The Voyage & other versions of poems of Baudelaire (1969)
- Prometheus Bound (translation) (1969)
- Poesie, 1940-1970 (English with Italian translations), Longanesi (Milan), (1972)
- History (1973)
- For Lizzie and Harriet (1973)
- The Dolphin (1973)
- Selected Poems (1976) (Revised Edition, 1977)
- Day by Day (1977)
- The Oresteia of Aeschylus (1978)
- Collected Prose (1987)
- Collected Poems (2003)
- Selected Poems (2006) (Expanded Edition)
- Memoirs. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2022.[117]
References
- ^ Hamilton, Ian. Robert Lowell: A Biography. Faber & Faber, 1982.
- ^ Hayes, Paula. Robert Lowell and the Confessional Voice. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2013. p. 37.
- ^ Kunitz, Stanley. "Talk with Robert Lowell." The New York Times. October 4, 1964. p. BR34.
- ^ National Book Award Website "National Book Awards – 1960"
- ^ a b c d e f g "Robert Lowell (1917-1977)." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 124. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. p 251.
- ^ a b c d e f "Robert Lowell". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved May 30, 2013.
- ^ "Poet Laureate Timeline: 1953-1960". Library of Congress. 2008. Retrieved December 19, 2008.
- ^ a b c d e f Mariani, Paul. Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. 10.
- ^ a b "Beyond Wikipedia: Notes on Robert Lowell's Family" Archived November 17, 2012, at Wikiwix Nicholas Jenkins: Arcade. May 7, 2010. Accessed November 16, 2012.
- ^ New York Council of Humanities Archived July 30, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Myer Myers: Jewish Silversmith in Colonial New York". absolutearts.com. May 26, 2005. Accessed November 16, 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f Hamilton, Ian. Robert Lowell: A Biography, Faber & Faber, 1982.
- ^ Lowell, Robert. "91 Revere Street." Life Studies. New York: FSG, 1959. 28.
- ^ Mariani, Paul. Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. p. 20.
- ^ Lowell, Robert. "Caligula". For the Union Dead. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1964. pp. 49–51.
- ^ Parker, Diantha. "Robert Lowell's Lightness", Poetry Magazine. November 25, 2010.
- ^ Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren. "Robert Lowell." Robert Lowell: Interviews and Memoirs. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1988. p. 38.
- ^ "Robert Lowell Poets of Cambridge, USA". Archived from the original on September 4, 2012. Retrieved September 29, 2006.
- ^ a b c Voices and Visions Series on Lowell - http://www.learner.org/resources/series57.html?pop=yes&pid=601
- ^ a b Interviewed by Frederick Seidel (1961). "The Art of Poetry No. 3, Robert Lowell". Vol. Winter-Spring 1961, no. 25. Paris Review. Retrieved May 30, 2013.
{{cite magazine}}
: Cite magazine requires|magazine=
(help) JSTOR 4337918.- ^ Robert Lowell @ Poets.org
- ^ "U of Illinois - Robert Lowell Bio Sketch". Archived from the original on January 30, 2012. Retrieved January 31, 2012.
- ^ "Draft Dodgers and Dissenters," Time Magazine, November 14, 1943, p. 12
- ^ "Robert Lowell's Letter to FDR". Dialog International. Retrieved May 30, 2013.
- ^ a b Hamilton, Saskia, ed. The Letters of Robert Lowell. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005, pp. 37-39.
- ^ Hamilton, Ian. Robert Lowell: A Biography, Faber & Faber, 1982, p. 322.
- ^ Hamilton, Ian. Robert Lowell: A Biography, Faber & Faber, 1982, p. 362
- ^ Mailer, Norman. The Armies of the Night. New York: New American Library, 1968.
- ^ Barsky, Robert F. Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1998. <"Marching with the Armies of the Night". Archived from the original on January 16, 2013. Retrieved June 24, 2014.>
- ^ Mariani, Paul. Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996, p. 362.
ISBN 978-0-8262-1029-6, p. 113.- ^ Bryan Marquard (September 24, 2010). "Donald Winslow, professor at BU; specialized in life writing; at 98". The Boston Globe. Retrieved December 16, 2010.
- ^ Meyers, Jeffrey, ed. Robert Lowell: Interviews and Memoirs. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988.
- ^ Hamilton, Ian. Robert Lowell: A Biography, Faber & Faber, 1982. p. 352
- ^ Academy of American Poets. Groundbreaking Books: Life Studies. 2005.Poets.org Archived May 29, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Independent Publisher article on Groundbreaking Books feature
- ^ Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 124. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. p 253.
- ^ Orr, Peter, ed. "The Poet Speaks - Interviews with Contemporary Poets Conducted by Hilary Morrish, Peter Orr, John Press and Ian Scott-Kilvert". London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966.
- ^ A Brief Guide To Confessional Poetry from Academy of American Poets' Website Archived May 9, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Kunitz, Stanley. Next-to-Last Things: New Poems and Essays. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1985.
- ^ Time Cover
- ^ "The Poets: A Second Chance." No Author listed. Time Magazine. June 2, 1967.
- ^ "Jean Stafford - Internet Accuracy Project". Accuracyproject.org. Retrieved May 30, 2013.
- ^ Voices and Visions Video Series. Robert Lowell
- ^ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. "Elizabeth Hardwick, Writer, Dies at 91. The New York Times. December 4, 2007.
- ^ Lowell, Robert. For Lizzie and Harriet. Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1973.
- ^ Lowell, Robert. The Dolphin. Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1973.
ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved January 10, 2020 – via www.theguardian.com.- ^ Bidart, Frank. "Notes." Robert Lowell: Collected Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003. 1137.
- ^ Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Ed. Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2008. xviii
- ^ Lowell, Robert. Collected Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2003.
- ^ Lowell, Robert. Collected Prose. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1987.
- ^ Travisano, Thomas. "Introduction." Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2008. xviii.
- ^ Lowell, Robert. Letters. "To Randall Jarrell." October 11, 1957. NY: FS&G, 2005. 296.
- ^ a b Helen Vendler phone interview on Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop audio podcast from The New York Review of Books. Accessed September 11, 2010
- ^ "Poetry Landmark: McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA." Academy of American Poetry. Poets.org Archived May 10, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Stossel, Sage. "The Difficult Grandeur of Robert Lowell". The Atlantic. June 18, 2003
- ^ Hamilton, Saskia. "Introduction: 'I Was Naked Without My Line-Ends.'" The Letters of Robert Lowell. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2005. xvii.
- ^ Gorney, Cynthia (September 14, 1977). "Poet Robert Lowell, Pulitzer Prize Honoree, Dies". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 19, 2022.
- ^ Bouchard, Gary (July 31, 2013). "A Visit to Robert Lowell's Dunbarton Gravestone". Back Porch Pages. Saint Anselm College. Retrieved February 19, 2022.
- ^ Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 124. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. p 252.
- ^ Tate, Allen. "Introduction." The Land of Unlikeness. Cummington Press, 1944.
- ^ Mariani, Paul. Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell. New York: W. W. Norton, 1994. 119.
- ^ a b Jarrell, Randall. "From the Kingdom of Necessity." No Other Book: Selected Essays. HarperCollins, 1999. p. 208-215.
- ^ Bogan, Louise. "Books." The New Yorker. November 30, 1946.
- ^ Warren, Austin. "A Double Discipline." Poetry, August 1947.
- ^ Mariani, Paul. Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell. New York: W. W. Norton, 1994.
- ^ Poore, Charles. "Books of the Times." The New York Times. 12 May 1951. p 15.
- ^ a b Jarrell, Randall. "A View of Three Poets." Partisan Review. November/December 1951, 696.
- ^ "National Book Awards – 1960". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-02.
(With acceptance speech by Lowell and essay by Dilruba Ahmed from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)- ^ a b Groundbreaking Poets: Life Studies. No author listed Archived May 29, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Robert Lowell accepts the 1960 National Book Award for Poetry for Life Studies, The National Book Foundation". Nationalbook.org. Retrieved May 30, 2013.
- ^ Cane, Tina. "The Raw and the Cooked: Robert Lowell and the Beats." Academy of American Poets Archived July 27, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Rosenthal, M. L. "Poetry as Confession." Our Life in Poetry: Selected Essays and Reviews. Persea Books: New York, 1991.
- ^ Bidart, Frank, editor. (2003) "On Confessional Poetry." Robert Lowell Collected Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. p. 997.
- ^ Nabokov, Vladimir, "On Adaptation". The New York Review of Books, December 4, 1969 and Strong Opinions, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1973.
- ^ Hofmann, Michael. "His Own Prophet." London Times Book Review. 11 Sept. 2003.
- ^ Lowell, Robert. Imitations. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1961.
- ^ Clurman, Harold. "Ignorance is a Betrayal of Pleasure." The New York Times 28 May 1961. BR5.
- ^ Doherty, Paul. "The Poet as Historian: 'For The Union Dead' by Robert Lowell." Concerning Poetry 1.2 (Fall 1968).
- ^ Williamson, Alan. Pity the Monsters: The Political Vision of Robert Lowell. Yale University Press, 1974.
- ^ Vendler, Helen. The Given and the Made: Strategies of Poetic Redefinition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1995), 13-17.
- ^ Hayes, Paula. Robert Lowell and the Confessional Voice. New York: Peter Lang, 2013. p. 23.
- ^ Publisher's play synopsis
- ^ Obie Awards for 1965
- ^ a b Hamilton, Ian. Robert Lowell: A Biography, Faber & Faber, 1982. p 327.
- ^ a b c Lowell, Robert. Notebook 1967-1968. Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. New York: 1968. p. 160.
- ^ Axelrod, Steven Gould, Robert Lowell: Life and Art, Princeton University Press, 1978. Retrieved from Poetry Foundation bio on Lowell
- ^ Fergusson, Fracis. "Prometheus at Yale." New York Review of Books. 1967.
- ^ Axelrod. Stephen. "Lowell's Comeback?" The New England Quarterly Vol. 77, No. 2. June 2004.
- ^ Words in Air: the Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Ed. Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008. pp. 707-708.
- ^ Spivack, Kathleen. With Robert Lowell and His Circle. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2012.
- ^ Mariani, Paul. Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. 423.
- ^ Meredith, William. "Notebook 1967-68." The New York Times. 15 June 1969. p. BR1.
- ^ Bedient, Calvin. "Visions and Revisions-Three New Volumes by America's First Poet." The New York Times. 29 July 1973. p. BR15.
- ^ Hofmann, Michael (September 11, 2003). "Michael Hofmann reviews 'Collected Poems' by Robert Lowell, edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter · LRB 11 September 2003". London Review of Books. 25 (17). Lrb.co.uk. Retrieved May 30, 2013.
- ^ "The achievement of Robert Lowell by Richard Tillinghast". The New Criterion. Retrieved May 30, 2013.
- ^ AO Scott's Collected Poems review on Slate "A Life's Study: Why Robert Lowell is America's most important career poet". Slate magazine. June 20, 2003.
- ^ "Marjorie Perloff's Collected Poems Review". Archived from the original on November 17, 2012. Retrieved February 5, 2013.
- ^ Lowell's obit in NY Times 9/13/1977
- ^ Voices and Visions Video Series. Robert Lowell. 1988.
- ^ Lowell, Robert. Collected Poems. Edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2003. p. 838.
- ^ Sastri, Reena. "Intimacy and Agency in Robert Lowell's Day by Day." Contemporary Literature Volume 50, Number 3, Fall 2009 pp. 461-495
- ^ Hall, Donald. "Robert Lowell and the Literature Industry." PN Review 8, Volume 5. July–September 1979. Retrieved from www.pnreview.co.uk
- ^ a b Vendler, Helen, "Robert Lowell's Last Days and Last Poems." Robert Lowell: A Tribute. Edited by Rolando Anzilotti. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1979. 156-171.
- ^ Lowell, Robert. Collected Prose. New York: FS&G, 1987.
- ^ Giroux, Robert. Introduction. Robert Lowell: Collected Prose. New York: FS&G, 1987.ix.
- ^ "The Passions of Robert Lowell" June 26, 2005 New York Times. Accessed September 18, 2010
- ^ Collected Poems:The Whole Lowell June 29, 2003 'New York Times. Accessed September 18, 2010
- ^ "A Life's Study: Why Robert Lowell is America's most important career poet". Slate magazine. June 20, 2003. Accessed September 18, 2010
- ^ They Might Giants Wiki. Retrieved from tmbw.net
- ^ They Might Be Giants (2000). "Robert Lowell" (recording)
- ^ Collins-Hughes, Laura. "Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell's Letters." Boston Globe. November 23, 2012. Accessed from onstage
- ^ Graham, Ruth. "Lettering the Stage." Retrieved from www.poetryfoundation.org
- ^ Hayes, Dade. Review: Scorsese Hits the Books with HBO's The 50 Year Argument. Retrieved from www.forbes.com
- ^ Briefly reviewed in the September 5, 2022 issue of The New Yorker, p.59.
Further reading
- Hamilton, Ian. Robert Lowell: A Biography, Faber & Faber, 1982.
- Jamison, Kay Redfield (2017). Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire. A study of Genius, Mania, and Character. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
ISBN 978-0-307-70027-8.- Lowell, Robert. Collected Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
- Mariani, Paul. Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996.
- Schoenberger, Nancy. Dangerous Muse: The Life of Lady Caroline Blackwood, Nan A. Talese, 2001.
ISBN 978-0385489799- Hamilton, Saskia, editor. The Letters of Robert Lowell. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005.
- Travisano, Thomas and Saskia Hamilton, eds. Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008.
- Hamilton, Saskia, editor. The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019.
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to Robert Lowell.
- Robert Lowell Papers at the Harry Ransom Center
- Audio recordings of Robert Lowell Archived October 22, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, from the Woodberry Poetry Room, Harvard University
- Robert Lowell at Find a Grave
- A Mania For Phrases. The Voices and Visions Series (Robert Lowell Episode). New York Center for Visual History, 1988.
- "Epilogue" by Robert Lowell at the Poetry Foundation.
- Articles on Lowell at Modern American Poetry, University of Illinois. Accessed 2010-09-11
- Frederick Seidel (Winter–Spring 1961). "Robert Lowell, The Art of Poetry No. 3". The Paris Review. Winter-Spring 1961 (25). Retrieved September 11, 2010.