Lowell, Robert Books

Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Robert Lowell once remarked in a letter to Elizabeth Bishop that “you ha[ve] always been my favorite poet and favorite friend.” The feeling was mutual. Bishop said that conversation with Lowell left her feeling “picked up again to the proper table-land of poetry,” and she once begged him, “Please never stop writing me letters—they always manage to make me feel like my higher self (I’ve been re-reading Emerson) for several days.” Neither ever stopped writing letters, from their first meeting in 1947 when both were young, newly launched poets until Lowell’s death in 1977. The substantial, revealing—and often very funny—interchange that they produced stands as a remarkable collective achievement, notable for its sustained conversational brilliance of style, its wealth of literary history, its incisive snapshots and portraits of people and places, and its delicious literary gossip, as well as for the window it opens into the unfolding human and artistic drama of two of America’s most beloved and influential poets.

Collected Poems

Robert Lowell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Masterful Collection (and very well-edited) 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

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.

Editorial Review:

Frank Bidart and David Gewanter have compiled the definitive edition of Robert Lowell’s work, from his first, impossible-to-find collection, Land of Unlikeness; to the early triumph of Lord Weary’s Castle, winner of the 1946 Pulitzer Prize; to the brilliant willfulness of his versions of poems by Sappho, Baudelaire, Rilke, Montale, and other masters in Imitations; to the late spontaneity of The Dolphin, winner of another Pulitzer Prize; to his last, most searching book, Day by Day. This volume also includes poems and translations never previously collected, and a selection of drafts that demonstrate the poet’s constant drive to reimagine his work. Collected Poems at last offers readers the opportunity to take in, in its entirety, one of the great careers in twentieth-century poetry.

Selected Poems: Revised Edition

Robert Lowell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Shared reading experience 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

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

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

The former 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 exclamation point after Lowell's poem for Ford Madox Ford. We both, apparently love "Margaret Fuller Drowned" as it rated one of only three poems marked with a star in the whole book.

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

Editorial Review:

Selected Poems includes over 200 poems, culled from each of Robert Lowell's books of verse--Lord Weary's Castle, The Mills of the Kavanaughs, Life Studies, For the Union Dead, Near the Ocean, History, For Lizzie and Harriet, and The Dolphin. This edition, which first appeared in 1977, was revised by the author: there are additions, deletions, and a change in sequence in the Dolphin section; the five poems in the title sequence from Near the Ocean are now uncut; and a new poem is added to the "Nineteen Thirties."

Life Studies and For the Union Dead (FSG Classics)

Robert Lowell

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

"For the Union Dead" - A Timeless Civil War Poem 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful.

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.

Editorial Review:

Robert Lowell, with Elizabeth Bishop, stands apart as the greatest American poet of the latter half of the twentieth century—and Life Studies and For the Union Dead stand as among his most important volumes. In Life Studies, which was first published in 1959, Lowell moved away from the formality of his earlier poems and started writing in a more confessional vein. The title poem of For the Union Dead concerns the death of the Civil War hero (and Lowell ancestor) Robert Gould Shaw, but it also largely centers on the contrast between Boston’s idealistic past and its debased present at the time of its writing, in the early 1960's. Throughout, Lowell addresses contemporaneous subjects in a voice and style that themselves push beyond the accepted forms and constraints of the time.

Notebook 1967-68: Poems

Robert Lowell

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Editorial Review:

A cycle of unrhymed sonnets dealing with public and private crises, marriage, middle age, and fatherhood, Notebook 1967–68 is considered by many readers to be one of Robert Lowell’s most innovative and searching works. Yet these freeform sonnets (which Lowell reworked in later volumes) are not included in their original form in his Collected Poems. Praised by Seamus Heaney for its “immediate, unprepossessing, blunt-edged force,” Notebook 1967–68 is a key to Lowell’s later style and a landmark in twentieth-century poetry.

The Voice of the Poet : Robert Lowell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Great package of tape & texts & introductory essay 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 9 people found this review helpful.

This series, the Voice of the Poet, offers not just great tapes--there are lots of sources for poetry tapes out there--but the best tapes in the best context. This package offers a fantastic selection of Lowell's poems, read by Lowell in very high-quality recordings. The texts for all the poems he reads are provided in an elegant booklet that sits in a convenient pocket in the tape-case, and J.D. McClatchy provides an extremely useful, thoughtful introduction to Lowell's poetry. I'm very happy to have it for myself, but I think it would would be perfect for students as well.

Editorial Review:

Read by the Poet
One Cassette, 1 hour

The second installment of our exclusive The Voice of the Poet series, comprised of rare archival recordings, some never before released, featuring Robert Lowell.

This audio production is accompanied by a book containing the text to the poems and a commentary by J.D. McClatchy.

Imitations

Robert Lowell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The must-have collection of translations 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

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.

Editorial Review:

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."

Robert Lowell Collected Prose

Robert Lowell

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Day by Day

Robert Lowell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

One of the Best, Definitely a Re-read 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

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.

Editorial Review:

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.

Lord Weary's Castle: The Mills of the Kavanaughs (Harvest/Hbj Book)

Robert Lowell

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Lord Weary's Castle: Challenging and obscure. The Mills of the Kavanaughs: Less complex. 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Lord Weary's Castle (awarded Pulitzer Prize of Poetry in 1947) and The Mills of the Kavanaughs established Robert Lowell's early fame. Literary critics widely praised Lowell for his technical brilliance, metrical complexity, and verbal ambiguity - perhaps explaining why Lowell's work is so often challenging, even obscure. I found reading Lord Weary's Castle is not unalike from studying mathematics, slightly too advanced mathematics. Sometimes I would see my way forward after returning again and again to a difficult point, but not infrequently Lowell's meaning remained elusive, just out of reach.

Disaffection, mistrust, anger, and savage criticism (one critic calls it apocalyptic rage) are often tightly linked to personal elements. For example, Lowell, in opposition to his family's New England Protestantism tradition, converted to Catholicism in 1940, and his deep religiosity - combined with his disillusion with mankind - dominate much of this poetry. He specifically targets modern civilization, materialism, and US war policy, particularly the bombing of German cities. (During World War II Lowell served a jail sentence as a conscientious objector.)

Lord Weary's Castle consists of 42 shorter poems. As a tentative guide, I mention that At the Indian Killer's Grave and Christmas Eve Under Hooker's Statue are examples of his disaffected critique of American history; The Exile's Return, War, and The Dead in Europe illustrate Lowell's anti-war sentiments; and The Holy Innocents, Christmas in Black Rock, and Mr. Edwards and the Spider combine moral passion with disillusion.

The second collection The Mills of the Kavanaughs (1951), is comprised of six longer poems, dramatic monologues that are structurally less complex, and more readily comprehended. This is mathematics that I have studied earlier and only need a review.

The title poem, The Mills of the Kavanaughs, is a New England widow's lament for her recently deceased husband. A short introductory paragraph clarifies the setting for this long poem. Falling Asleep over the Aeneid is an old man's dream that muddles his reading of Virgil with his childhood memories of the death of his uncle, a young officer in the Civil War. The third poem, Her Dead Brother, is an unsettling memory of incest.

Mother Marie Therese - death by drowning in 1912 is a poignant, mournful memory of a past now nearly forgotten. Thanksgiving's Over is another dream, this one recalling a wife that committed suicide while living in a sanatorium. The Fat Man in the Mirror is a short, sadly humorous questioning of just how a young, playful boy became the man in the mirror.

The poem David and Bathsheba in the Public Gardens somewhat obscurely contrasts the thoughts of two lovers. (Years later Lowell published a new version in his collection titled For The Union Dead. He wrote: "The Public Garden is a recasting and clarification of an old confusing poem of mine called David and Bathsheba in the Public Garden.")

Editorial Review:

A combined edition of the poet's early work, including Lord Weary's Castle, a collection of forty-two short poems, which won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize, and The Mills of the Kavanaughs, a narrative poem of six hundred lines, and five other long poems.