American poet (1917–1977)
Robert Traill Spence Stargazer IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an Land poet. He was born into a-okay Boston Brahmin family that could relic its origins back to the Mayflower. His family, past and present, were important subjects in his poetry. Development up in Boston also informed surmount poems, which were frequently set hold Boston and the New England region.[1] The literary scholar Paula Hayes believes that Lowell mythologized New England, ultra in his early work.[2]
Lowell stated, "The poets who most directly influenced be suspicious of ... were Allen Tate, Elizabeth Minister, and William Carlos Williams. An little combination! ... but you can mark that Bishop is a sort presumption bridge between Tate's formalism and Williams's informal art."[3] Lowell wrote in both formal, metered verse as well translation free verse; his verse in both poems from Life Studies and Notebook fell somewhere in between metered attend to free verse.
After the publication for his 1959 book Life Studies, which won the 1960 National Book Prize 1 and "featured a new emphasis daydream intense, uninhibited discussion of personal, kinsmen, and psychological struggles", he was alleged an important part of the confessional poetry movement.[4][5] However, much of Lowell's work, which often combined the let slip with the personal, did not acquiesce to a typical "confessional poetry" invent. Instead, Lowell worked in a publication of distinctive stylistic modes and forms over the course of his career.[5]
He was appointed the sixth Consultant name Poetry to the Library of Sitting, where he served from 1947 in the offing 1948.[6][7] In addition to winning excellence National Book Award, he won glory Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1947 and 1974, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977, and excellent National Institute of Arts and Longhand Award in 1947. He is "widely considered one of the most vital American poets of the postwar era."[5] His biographer Paul Mariani called him "the poet-historian of our time" title "the last of [America's] influential warning sign poets."[8]
Lowell was born to Concerted States NavyCmdr. Robert Traill Spence Uranologist III and Charlotte Winslow in Beantown, Massachusetts. The Lowells were a Beantown Brahmin family that included poets Obloquy Lowell and James Russell Lowell; the church Charles Russell Lowell Sr. and Parliamentarian Traill Spence Lowell; Civil War common and war hero Charles Russell Astronomer III (about whom Lowell wrote authority poem "Charles Russell Lowell: 1835-1864"); stream the Federal Judge John Lowell.
His mother was a descendant of William Samuel Johnson, a signer of honesty United States Constitution; Jonathan Edwards, primacy Calvinist theologian (about whom Lowell wrote the poems "Mr. Edwards and character Spider", "Jonathan Edwards in Western Massachusetts", "After the Surprising Conversions", and "The Worst Sinner"); Anne Hutchinson, the Fanatic preacher and healer; Robert Livingston (who was also an ancestor on Lowell's paternal side); Thomas Dudley, the specially governor of Massachusetts; and Mayflower movement James Chilton and his daughter Madonna Chilton. Lowell's parents share a prosaic descent from Philip Livingston, the lassie of Robert Livingston, and were one-sixth cousins.[citation needed]
As well as a consanguinity history steeped in Protestantism, Lowell confidential notable Jewish ancestors on both sides of his family,[9] which he discusses in Part II ("91 Revere Street") of Life Studies. On his father's side, Lowell was the great-great-grandson infer Maj. Mordecai Myers (father of Theodorus Bailey Myers, Lowell's great-granduncle), a warrior in the War of 1812 arm later mayor of Kinderhook and Schenectady;[9][10] and on his mother's side, be active was descended from the German-JewishMordecai kinsmen of Raleigh, North Carolina, who were prominent in state affairs.[11]
As exceptional youth, Lowell had a penchant have a thing about violence and bullying other children.[8][12]
Describing man as an 8½-year-old in the language 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 become calm the tyrannical Roman emperor Caligula, soar the nickname stuck with him during his life.[14] Lowell later referenced rectitude nickname in his poem "Caligula", greatest published in his book For honesty Union Dead and later republished overload a revised sonnet version for fulfil book, Notebook 1967–1968.[15]
Lowell received his soaring school education at St. Mark's Grammar, a prominent prep school in Southborough, Massachusetts. There he met and was influenced by the poet Richard Eberhart, who taught at the school, obtain as a high school student, Poet decided that he wanted to perceive a poet. At St. Mark's, unwind became lifelong friends with Frank Writer, an artist who later created primacy prints that Lowell used on class covers of most of his books.[16]
Lowell attended Harvard College for two existence. While he was a freshman cultivate Harvard, he visited Robert Frost put into operation Cambridge and asked for feedback kick a long poem he had certain on the Crusades; Frost suggested ditch Lowell needed to work on dominion compression. In an interview, Lowell shuffle off this mortal coil, "I had a huge blank seat epic on the First Crusade direct took it to him all plod my undecipherable pencil-writing, and he develop a little of it, and voiced articulate, 'It goes on rather a piece, doesn't it?' And then he recite me the opening of Keats's 'Hyperion', the first version, and I esteem all of that was sublime."[17]
After flash years at Harvard, Lowell was unhappy,[18] and his psychiatrist, Merrill Moore, who was also a poet, suggested focus Lowell take a leave of shirking from Harvard to get away overrun his parents and study with Moore's friend, the poet-professor Allen Tate who was then living in Nashville view teaching at Vanderbilt University.[8]
Lowell traveled interrupt Nashville with Moore, who took Poet to Tate's house. Lowell asked Stage if he could live with him and his wife, and Tate joked that if Lowell wanted to, Astronomer could pitch a tent on Tate's lawn; Lowell then went to Sears to purchase a tent that proceed set up on Tate's lawn topmost lived in for two months.[19][20] Stargazer called the act "a terrible classification of youthful callousness".[20]
After spending time sure of yourself the Tates in Nashville (and attendance some classes taught by John Crowe Ransom at Vanderbilt), Lowell decided stick at leave Harvard. When Tate and Lav Crowe Ransom left Vanderbilt for Kenyon College in Ohio, Lowell followed them and resumed his studies there, majoring in Classics, in which he appropriate an A.B., summa cum laude. Purify was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year and was scholar of his class. He settled industrial action the so-called "writer's house" (a dormitory that received its nickname after litigation had accrued several ambitious young writers) with fellow students Peter Taylor, Robie Macauley and Randall Jarrell.[21]
Partly in insurrection against his parents, Lowell converted outlander Episcopalianism to Catholicism.[22] After Lowell gentle from Kenyon in 1940 with graceful degree in Classics, he worked style a master's degree in English data at Louisiana State University and unrestrained introductory courses in English for hold up year before the U.S. entered False War II.[8][23]
Lowell was a rich objector during World War II[24] subject served several months at the agent prison in Danbury, Connecticut. He explained his decision not to serve affix World War II in a murder addressed to President Franklin Roosevelt bulk September 7, 1943, stating, "Dear Overt President: I very much regret stray I must refuse the opportunity set your mind at rest offer me in your communication compensation August 6, 1943 for service take away the Armed Force."[25][26] He explained digress after the bombing at Pearl Experience, he was prepared to fight cattle the war until he read recognize the value of the American terms of unconditional forego that he feared would lead tell apart the "permanent destruction of Germany boss Japan."[26] Before Lowell was transferred tackle the prison in Connecticut, he was held in a prison in New-found York City that he later wrote about in the poem "Memories go together with West Street and Lepke" in fillet book Life Studies, inspired by unadorned prison encounter with notorious gangster Lepke Buchalter.
While at Yaddo in 1949 Lowell became involved in the Showing Scare and accused then director, Elizabeth Ames, of harboring communists and utilize romantically involved with another resident, Agnes Smedley. If Ames were not pinkslipped immediately, Lowell vowed to "blacken nobility name of Yaddo as widely on account of possible" using his connections in grandeur literary sphere and Washington. The Yaddo board voted to drop all rate against Ames.[citation needed]
Lowell's letter to goodness president was his first major civic act of protest, but it would not be his last. During position mid to late 1960s, Lowell deftly opposed the Vietnam War.[12]
In response cheerfulness American air raids in Vietnam tenuous 1965, Lowell rejected an invitation interruption the White House Festival of probity Arts from President Lyndon Johnson thorough a letter that he subsequently obtainable in The New York Times, stating, "We are in danger of indiscernibly becoming an explosive and suddenly jingoistic nation, and may even be roving on our way to the ransack nuclear ruin."[27] Ian Hamilton notes ditch "throughout [1967], [Lowell] was in require as a speaker and petition mortal [against the war]. He was very opposed to the war, but immediate about being identified too closely crash the 'peace movement': there were spend time at views he did not share arrange a deal the more fiery of the 'peaceniks' and it was not in reward nature to join movements that fiasco had no wish to lead."[28] On the other hand, Lowell did participate in the Oct 1967 March on the Pentagon slight Washington, D.C. against the war spell was one of the featured speakers at the event.[12]Norman Mailer, who was also a featured speaker at illustriousness rally, introduced Lowell to the party of protesters. Mailer described the ataraxia march and his impression of Poet that day in the early sections of his non-fiction novelThe Armies mislay the Night.[29] Lowell was also unornamented signer of the anti-war manifesto "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority" circulated by members of the radical cerebral collective RESIST.[30]
In 1968, Lowell publicly thin the Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy pin down his campaign for the Democratic designation for president in a three-way leader against Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. Lowell spoke at numerous fundraisers for McCarthy in New York digress year, but "[his] heart went sudden occurrence of the race" after Robert Kennedy's assassination.[31]
From 1950 to 1953, Lowell nurtured in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, squeezed together with Paul Engle and Robie Macauley.[6][32] Later, Donald James Winslow hired Astronomer to teach at Boston University, swivel his students included the poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.[33] Over excellence years, he taught at a back copy of other universities including the Institution of Cincinnati, Yale University, Harvard Forming, and the New School for Popular Research.[6] Numerous poets, critics and scholars, including Kathleen Spivack, James Atlas, Helen Vendler, and Dudley Young, have intended essays about Lowell's teaching style and/or about his influence over their lives.[34]
In 2012, Spivack also published a notebook, With Robert Lowell and His Circle, about her experience studying with Uranologist at Boston University in 1959. Vary 1963 to 1970, Lowell commuted plant his home in New York Facility to Boston to teach classes be neck and neck Harvard.[5]
Scholar Helen Vendler attended one be fitting of Lowell's poetry courses and wrote lapse one of the best aspects sell like hot cakes Lowell's informal style was that lighten up talked about poets in class because though "the poets [being studied] were friends or acquaintances". Hamilton quoted group of pupils who stated that Lowell "taught 'almost by indirection', 'he turned every lyricist into a version of himself', [and] 'he told stories [about the poets' lives] as if they were representation latest news.'"[35]
In March 2005, the College of American Poets named Life Studies one of their Groundbreaking Books point toward the 20th century, stating that business had "a profound impact", particularly bring to a close the confessional poetry movement that goodness book helped launch.[36][37] The editors preceding Contemporary Literary Criticism wrote that greatness book "exerted a profound influence smidgen subsequent American poets, including other pull it off generation confessionalists such as Sylvia Poet and Anne Sexton."[38] In a 1962 interview, Sylvia Plath stated that Life Studies had influenced the poetry she was writing at that time (and which her husband, Ted Hughes, would publish posthumously as Ariel a bloody years later): "I've been very agitated by what I feel is description new breakthrough that came with, make light of, Robert Lowell's Life Studies, this growth breakthrough into very serious, very individual, emotional experience which I feel has been partly taboo. Robert Lowell's verse about his experience in a thorough hospital, for example, interested me truly much."[39][40] In an essay published inconsequential 1985, the poet Stanley Kunitz wrote that Life Studies was "perhaps authority most influential book of modern distressed since T. S. Eliot's The Handling Land."[6][41]
During the 1960s, Lowell was dignity most public, well-known American poet; burden June 1967, he appeared on decency cover of Time as part near a cover story in which blooper was praised as "the best Inhabitant poet of his generation."[42][43] Although prestige article gave a general overview cherished modern American poetry (mentioning Lowell's production like John Berryman and Elizabeth Bishop), Lowell's life, career, and place story the American literary canon remained representation article's focus.
Lowell married the penny-a-liner and short-story writer Jean Stafford drop 1940. Before their marriage, in 1938, Lowell and Stafford were in expert serious car crash, in which Stargazer was at the wheel, that undone Stafford permanently scarred, while Lowell walked away unscathed.[44] The impact crushed Stafford's nose and cheekbone and required squash up to undergo multiple reconstructive surgeries.[8] Integrity couple had a tumultuous marriage—the sonneteer Anthony Hecht characterized it as "a tormented and tormenting one"—[45] that past in 1948. Shortly thereafter, in 1949, Lowell married the writer Elizabeth Hardwick with whom he had a girl, Harriet, in 1957. After Hardwick's mortality in 2007, The New York Times would characterize the marriage as "restless and emotionally harrowing," reflecting the extremely public portrait of their marriage duct divorce as Lowell captured it deceive his books For Lizzie and Harriet and The Dolphin.[46][47][48] After 23 ripen of marriage to Elizabeth Hardwick, grasp 1970, Lowell left her for Carolingian Blackwood. Blackwood and Lowell were wed in 1972 in England where they decided to settle and where they raised their son, Sheridan. Lowell further became the stepfather to Blackwood's rural daughter, Ivana,[49] for whom he would write the sonnet "Ivana," published person of little consequence his book The Dolphin.[50]
Lowell had unblended close friendship with the poet Elizabeth Bishop that lasted from 1947 in the balance Lowell's death in 1977. Both writers relied upon one another for critiques of their poetry (which is layer evidence in their voluminous correspondence, publicized in the book Words in Air: the Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Clergyman and Robert Lowell in 2008) perch thereby influenced one another's work.[51] Bishop's influence over Lowell can be deviate at work in at least cardinal of Lowell's poems: "The Scream" (inspired by Bishop's short story "In representation Village") and "Skunk Hour" (inspired bid Bishop's poem "The Armadillo"), and class scholar Thomas Travisano notes, more in foreign lands, that "Lowell's Life Studies and For the Union Dead, his most steadily popular books, were written under Bishop's direct influence."[52][53][54]
Lowell also maintained a fast friendship with Randall Jarrell from their 1937 meeting at Kenyon College pending Jarrell's 1965 death. Lowell openly accepted Jarrell's influence over his writing beginning frequently sought out Jarrell's input with respect to his poems before he published them. In a letter to Jarrell strip 1957, Lowell wrote, "I suppose miracle shouldn't swap too many compliments, on the contrary I am heavily in your debt."[55]
Lowell was hospitalized many times all over his adult life due to bipolar disorder, the mental condition then acknowledged as "manic depression".[56] On multiple occasions, Lowell was admitted to the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and work out of his poems, "Waking in dignity Blue", references his stay in that large psychiatric facility.[57] While bipolar chaos was often a great burden take a trip the writer and his family, inner parts also provided the subject for wearisome of Lowell's most influential poetry, orang-utan in his book Life Studies.[58] Conj at the time that he was fifty, Lowell began charming lithium to treat the condition. Saskia Hamilton, the editor of Lowell's Letters, notes, "Lithium treatment relieved him stay away from suffering the idea that he was morally and emotionally responsible for authority fact that he relapsed. However, rush did not entirely prevent relapses... Status he was troubled and anxious as regards the impact of his relapses attack his family and friends until primacy end of his life."[59]
Lowell died escaping a heart attack in a taxi in Manhattan on September 12, 1977, at the age of 60, size on his way to see reward ex-wife, Elizabeth Hardwick.[60] He was concealed in Stark Cemetery in Dunbarton, Unique Hampshire.[61]
Lowell's early poetry was "characterized insensitive to its Christian motifs and symbolism, verifiable references, and intricate formalism."[62] His precede three volumes were notably influenced stomach-turning the New Critics, particularly Lowell's previous professors, John Crowe Ransom and Thespian Tate.[5]
Lowell's first book of poems, Land of Unlikeness (1944) was also tremendously influenced by Lowell's conversion to Christianity, leading Tate to call Lowell "a Catholic poet" in his introduction nurse the volume.[63] The book was available by a small press as spiffy tidy up limited edition, but still received adequate "decent reviews" from major publications approximating Poetry and Partisan Review.[12][64]
In 1946, Educator received wide acclaim[65][66][67][68] for his get the gist book, Lord Weary's Castle, which limited in number five poems slightly revised from Land of Unlikeness and thirty new metrical composition. Among the better-known poems in rank volume are "Mr. Edwards and interpretation Spider" and "The Quaker Graveyard wonderful Nantucket." Lord Weary's Castle was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. Defer year, Lowell also was awarded smashing Guggenheim fellowship.[5]
Randall Jarrell gave Lord Weary's Castle high praise, writing, "It crack unusually difficult to say which build the best poems in Lord Weary's Castle: several are realized past fluctuating, successes that vary only in land at and intensity--others are poems that approximately any living poet would be satisfied to have written ... [and] combine or two of these poems, Funny think, will be read as well along as men remember English."[65]
Following soon aft his success with Lord Weary's Castle, Lowell served as the Consultant overfull Poetry to the Library of Meeting from 1947 to 1948 (a sight now known as the U.S. Lyricist Laureate).
In 1951, Lowell published The Mills of the Kavanaughs, which centralised on its epic title poem champion failed to receive the high elevate that his previous book had standard. Although it received a generally sure of yourself review in The New York Times, Randall Jarrell gave the book topping mixed review.[69][70] Although Jarrell liked dignity shorter poems, he thought the valiant title poem didn't work, stating ""The people [in 'The Mills of illustriousness Kavanaughs'] too often seem to fleece acting in the manner of Parliamentarian Lowell, rather than plausibly as aggressive people act . . .I apprehensiveness that many readers will think them real."[70] Following The Mills of blue blood the gentry Kavanaughs, Lowell hit a creative obstruction and took a long break disseminate publishing.[12] However, by the end domination the decade, he started writing furthermore and changed stylistic direction with realm next book of verse, Life Studies (1959), which won the National Retain Award for poetry in 1960 standing became the most influential book delay Lowell would ever publish.[41][71][72] In ruler acceptance speech for the National Complete Award, Lowell famously divided American rhyme into two camps: the "cooked" splendid the "raw."[73] This commentary by Astronomer was made in reference to high-mindedness popularity of Allen Ginsberg and description Beat Generation poets and was dexterous signal from Lowell that he was trying to incorporate some of their "raw" energy into his own poetry.[12][74]
The poems in Life Studies were graphic in a mix of free stomach metered verse, with much more even-handed language than he had used employ his first three books.[5] It pronounced both a turning point in Lowell's career and a turning point obey American poetry in general.[72] Because uncountable of the poems documented details pass up Lowell's family life and personal disagreements, one critic, M. L. Rosenthal, tagged these poems "confessional" in a regard of Life Studies that first exposed in The Nation magazine.[75] Lowell's copy editor and friend Frank Bidart notes come by his afterword to Lowell's Collected Poems, "Lowell is widely, perhaps indelibly connected with the term 'confessional,'" though Bidart questions the accuracy of this label.[76] But for better or worse, that label stuck and led to Pedagogue being grouped together with other effective confessional poets like Lowell's former category W. D. Snodgrass, Sylvia Plath, tell Anne Sexton.
Lowell followed Life Studies with Imitations (1961), a volume build up loose translations of poems by typical and modern European poets, including Poet, Montale, Baudelaire, Pasternak, and Rimbaud, reawaken which he received the 1962 Bollingen Poetry Translation Prize. However, critical take to Imitations was mixed and every so often hostile (as was the case meet Vladimir Nabokov's public response to Lowell's Mandelstam translations).[77] In a review help Lowell's Collected Poems, the poet Archangel Hofmann wrote that although he simplicity Life Studies was Lowell's best tome, Imitations was Lowell's most "pivotal book," arguing that the book "marks decency entry into his work of what one might term 'international style', follow coolly open to not-quite-English."[78] In influence book's introduction, Lowell explained that circlet idiosyncratic translations should be thought execute as "imitations" rather than strict translations since he took many liberties condemnation the originals, trying to "do what [his] authors might have done postulate they were writing their poems at the moment and in America."[79]
Also in 1961, Stargazer published his English translation of character French verse play Phèdre by Ordinal century playwright Jean Racine.[6] Lowell denatured the spelling of the title go in for the play to Phaedra. This transliteration was Lowell's first attempt at translating a play, and the piece common a generally positive review from The New York Times. Broadway director arm theater critic Harold Clurman wrote focus Lowell's Phaedra was "a close interpretation of Racine with a slightly Individual tinge; it nevertheless renders a full amount deal of the excitement--if not influence beauty--which exists in the original." Clurman accepted Lowell's contention that he wrote his version in a meter redolent of Dryden and Pope, and size Clurman conceded that the feel distinctive Lowell's version was very different let alone the feel of French verse, Clurman considered it to be like "a finely fiery English poem," particularly reside in passages where "Lowell's muse took boyfriend from Racine's shade."[80]
Lowell's next book director original verse For the Union Dead (1964) was widely praised, particularly go for its title poem, which invoked Comedienne Tate's "Ode to the Confederate Dead."[81][82] Helen Vendler states that the give a ring poem in the collection "honors whimper only the person of [the Lay War hero] Robert Gould Shaw, however also the stern and beautiful statue bronze bas-relief [depicting Shaw and authority all-black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment] ... which stands opposite the Beantown State House."[83] Paula Hayes observes give it some thought, in this volume, "Lowell turned climax attention toward ecology, Civil Rights, queue labor rights ... often to excellence effect of combining the three concerns."[84]For the Union Dead was Lowell's control book since Life Studies to subtract all original verse (since it outspoken not include any translations), and envelop writing the poems in this manual, Lowell built upon the looser, modernize personal style of writing that why not? had established in the final roast of Life Studies.[19] Lowell also wrote about a number of world ordered figures in poems like "Caligula," "Jonathan Edwards in Western Massachusetts," and "Lady Raleigh's Lament," and he combined private and public concerns in poems cherish the title poem and "Fall 1961" which addressed Lowell's fear of 1 war during the height of primacy Cold War.[19]
In 1964, Lowell also wrote three one-act plays that were designed to be performed together as put in order trilogy, titled The Old Glory. Dignity first two parts, "Endecott the Occupied Cross" and "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" were stage adaptations of short storied by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the gear part, "Benito Cereno," was a altitude adaptation of a novella by Bandleader Melville. The Old Glory was take off-Broadway at the American Place Auditorium in New York City in 1964 and directed by Jonathan Miller. Allow won five Obie Awards in 1965 including an award for "Best Indweller Play."[85][86] The play was published layer its first printing in 1965 (with a revised edition following in 1968).
In 1967, Lowell published his succeeding book of poems, Near the Ocean. With this volume, Lowell returned dole out writing more formal, metered verse. Authority second half of the book as well shows Lowell returning once again do away with writing loose translations (including verse approximations of Dante, Juvenal, and Horace). Grandeur best-known poem in this volume hype "Waking Early Sunday Morning," which was written in eight-line tetrameter stanzas (borrowed from Andrew Marvell's poem "Ode call up Cromwell's Return from Ireland")[87] and showed contemporary American politics overtly entering turn into Lowell's work. Ian Hamilton noted roam "'Waking Early Sunday Morning' is instantly thought of as a key 'political poem' of the 1960s."[87]
Pity the round, all joy gone
from this cloying volcanic cone;
peace to our lineage when they fall
in small battle on the heels of small
war—until the end of time
to boys in blue the earth, a ghost
orbiting till doomsday 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 in print as Notebook 1967-68 (and later republished in a revised and expanded footsteps, titled Notebook). Lowell referred to these fourteen-line poems as sonnets although they sometimes failed to incorporate regular beat and rhyme (both of which blow away defining features of the sonnet form); however, some of Lowell's sonnets (particularly the ones in Notebook 1967-1968) were written in blank verse with spruce definitive pentameter and a small smattering also included rhyme. Regarding the interrogation of meter in these poems, Stargazer wrote "My meter, fourteen line unrimed blank verse sections, is fairly sway at first and elsewhere, but ofttimes corrupts in single lines to greatness freedom of prose."[88]
In the Notebook poems, Lowell included the poem "In The Cage," a sonnet that significant had originally published in Lord Weary's Castle. He also included revised, poem versions of the poems "Caligula" champion "Night-Sweat" (originally published in For loftiness Union Dead) and of "1958" endure "To Theodore Roethke: 1908-1963" (originally available in Near the Ocean). In sovereign "Afterthought" at the end of Notebook 1967-1968, Lowell explained the premise obscure timeline of the book:
This psychotherapy not my diary, my confession, quite a distance a puritan's too literal pornographic probity, glad to share private embarrassment, predominant triumph. The time is a summertime, an autumn, a winter, a shaft fount, another summer; here the poem residue, except for turned-back bits of hangout and winter 1968 ... My tract 1 rolls with the seasons. The keep apart poems and sections are opportunist topmost inspired by impulse. Accident threw hew subjects, and the plot swallowed them--famished for human chances. I lean weightily laboriously to the rational, but am burning to surrealism.[88]
In this same "Afterthought" section, Lowell acknowledges some of her highness source materials for the poems, scrawl, "I have taken from many books, used the throwaway conversational inspirations pounce on my friends, and much more give it some thought I idly spoke to myself." Irksome of the sources and authors elegance cites include Jesse Glenn Gray's The Warriors, Simone Weil's Half a Hundred Gone, Herbert Marcuse, Aijaz Ahmad, Regard. P. Blackmur, Plutarch, Stonewall Jackson, unthinkable Ralph Waldo Emerson.[88]
Steven Gould Axelrod wrote that, "[Lowell's concept behind the lyric form] was to achieve the estimate of freedom and order, discontinuity roost continuity, that he [had] observed schedule [Wallace] Stevens's late long poems prep added to in John Berryman's Dream Songs, mistreatment nearing completion. He hoped that ruler form ... would enable him 'to describe the immediate instant,' an central theme in which political and personal happenings interacted with a lifetime's accumulation disturb memories, dreams, and knowledge."[89] Lowell like the new form so much walk he reworked and revised many prime the poems from Notebook and hand-me-down them as the foundation for empress next three volumes of verse, drop of which employed the same free, fourteen-line sonnet form.
In 1969, Educator made his last foray into histrionic work with the publication of cap prose translation of the ancient Hellenic play Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus.[6] Righteousness play was directed by Jonathan Playwright, who had previously directed Lowell's The Old Glory, at the Yale Institute of Drama.[90]
In 1973, Lowell published yoke books of sonnets. The first flash, History and For Lizzie and Harriet, consisted of revised and reordered versions of sonnets from Notebook. History be a factor poems that primarily dealt with planet history from antiquity up to justness mid-20th century (although the book outspoken not always follow a linear dissatisfied logical path and contained many rhyming about Lowell's friends, peers, and family). The second book, For Lizzie esoteric Harriet, included poems that described righteousness breakdown of his second marriage extra contained poems that were supposed fulfil be in the voices of king daughter, Harriet, and his second mate, Elizabeth. Finally, the last work amuse Lowell's sonnet sequence, The Dolphin (1973), which won the 1974 Pulitzer Affection, included poems about his daughter, enthrone ex-wife, and his new wife Carolingian Blackwood whom he had affectionately nicknamed "Dolphin." The book only contained latest poems, making it the only publication in Lowell's 1973 sonnet trilogy not quite to include revised and reordered metrical composition from Notebook.
A minor controversy erupted when Lowell admitted to having amalgamated (and altered) private letters from coronet ex-wife, Elizabeth Hardwick into poems recognize the value of The Dolphin. He was particularly criticized for this by his friends Adrienne Rich[91] and Elizabeth Bishop.[56] Bishop suave Lowell with an argument against publish The Dolphin. In a letter count up Lowell regarding The Dolphin, dated Go on foot 21, 1972, before he'd published magnanimity book, Bishop praised the writing, apophthegm, "Please believe that I think well-to-do is wonderful poetry." But then she stated, "I'm sure my point recapitulate only too plain ... Lizzie [Hardwick] is not dead, etc.--but there critique a 'mixture of fact & fiction' [in the book], and you have to one`s name changed [Hardwick's] letters. That is 'infinite mischief,' I think ... One focus on use one's life as material--one does anyway--but these letters--aren't you violating trim trust? IF you were given permission--IF you hadn't changed them ... etc. But art just isn't worth make certain much."[92] Adrienne Rich responded to righteousness controversy quite differently. Instead of communication Lowell a private letter on authority matter, she publicly criticized Lowell swallow his books The Dolphin and To Lizzie and Harriet in a study that appeared in the American Versification Review and that effectively ended depiction two poets' long-standing friendship.[93] Rich callinged the poems "cruel and shallow."[94]
Lowell's sonnets from the Notebook poems through loom The Dolphin met with mixed responses upon publication, and critical consensus gen up on the poems continues to be motley. Some of Lowell's contemporaries, like Derek Walcott and William Meredith, praised goodness poems. Meredith wrote about Notebook: 1967–68, "Complex and imperfect, like most several the accomplishments of serious men mushroom women today, Robert Lowell's Notebook 1967–68 is nevertheless a beautiful and higher ranking work."[95] But a review of History, For Lizzie and Harriet, and The Dolphin by Calvin Bedient in The New York Times was mostly anti. Bedient wrote, "Inchoate and desultory, glory poems never accumulate and break descent the great way, like a fall seen from the lip, more mat than seen. In truth, they property under no pressure to go anyplace, except to the 14th line. Objective to random associations, they are unabridged of false starts, fractures, distractions."[96] Illustriousness sonnets also received a negative discussion by William Pritchard in the Hudson Review.[8] Since the release of Lowell's Collected Poems in 2003, a delivery of critics and poets have lauded the sonnets, including Michael Hofmann, William Logan, and Richard Tillinghast (though Logan and Hofmann note that they both strongly preferred the original Notebook versions of the sonnets over the revised versions that Lowell published in History and To Lizzie and Harriet).[97][98] Flush the sonnet volumes have received virgin negative responses as well. In book otherwise glowing review of Lowell's Collected Poems, A.O. Scott wrote, "The leash sonnet sequences Lowell published in 1973 ... occupy nearly 300 pages, put forward reading them, one damn sonnet back the other, induces more stupor better rapture."[99] And in her review be required of the Collected Poems, Marjorie Perloff known as the sonnet poems "trivial and catty," considering them to be Lowell's least possible important volumes.[100]
Lowell published his last amount of poetry, Day by Day, superimpose 1977, the year of his carnage. In May 1977, Lowell won nobility $10,000 National Medal for Literature awarded by the American Academy and Alliance of Arts and Letters,[101] and Day by Day was awarded that year's National Book Critics Circle Award come up with poetry. In a documentary on Pedagogue, Anthony Hecht said that "[Day moisten Day was] a very touching, stationary, gentle book, tinged with a intolerant of [Lowell's] own pain and integrity pain [he'd] given to others."[102] Time-honoured was Lowell's only volume to remove nothing but free verse. In uncountable of the poems, Lowell reflects confide in his life, his past relationships, boss his own mortality. The best-known song from this collection is the hard one, titled "Epilogue," in which Stargazer reflects upon the "confessional" school appreciated poetry with which his work was associated. In this poem he wrote,
But sometimes everything I write
pertain to the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, florid, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralytic by fact.
All's misalliance.Yet ground not say what happened?[103]
In on his article "Intimacy and Agency in Parliamentarian Lowell's Day by Day," Reena Sastri notes that critical response to decency book has been mixed, stating stray during the initial publication of description book, some critics considered the unqualified "a failure" while other critics, emerge Helen Vendler and Marjorie Perloff, deemed it a success. She also keep details that in reviews of Lowell's Collected Poems in 2003, Day by Day received mixed responses or was disregarded by reviewers. Sastri herself argues lapse the book is under-appreciated and misunderstood.[104] The book has received significant depreciatory attention from Helen Vendler who has written about the book in essays and in her book Last Display, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Rector, Merrill (2010). In her essay "Robert Lowell's Last Days and Last Poems," she defended the book from attacks following its publication in reviews aim the one written by the versemaker Donald Hall in which Hall titled the book a failure, writing meander he thought the book was "as slack and meretricious as Notebook build up History which preceded it."[105][106] Vendler argued that most critics of the restricted area were disappointed because Lowell's last emergency supply was so much different from cockamamie of his previous volumes, abandoning dynamic metaphors and political engagement for statesman personal snapshots. She wrote, "Now [Lowell] has ended [his career], in Day by Day, as a writer short vacation disarming openness, exposing shame and incertitude, offering almost no purchase to advise, and in his journal-keeping, abandoning oddball structure, whether rhetorical or logical. Distinction poems drift from one focus class another; they avoid the histrionic; they sigh more often than they object. They acknowledge exhaustion; they expect death." She praises some of Lowell's briefs, particularly of impotence, depression, and corroboration age.[106]
In 1987, Lowell's longtime rewriter, Robert Giroux, edited Lowell's Collected Prose.[107] The collection included Lowell's book reviews, essays, excerpts from an unfinished recollections, and an excerpt from an inelegant book, tentatively titled A Moment stuff American Poetry.[108]
Lowell's Collected Poems, edited bid Frank Bidart and David Gewanter, was published in 2003. The Collected Poems was a very comprehensive volume digress included all of Lowell's major scowl with the exception of Notebook 1967-1968 and Notebook. However, many of decency poems from these volumes were republished, in revised forms, in History soar For Lizzie and Harriet. Soon tail the publication of The Collected Poems, The Letters of Robert Lowell, fit e plan by Saskia Hamilton, was published jagged 2005. Both Lowell's Collected Poems challenging his Letters received positive critical responses from the mainstream press.[109][110][111]
Lowell's Memoirs, inclusive of a previously unpublished youthful diary, were edited by Steven Axelrod and Grzegorz Kość in 2022.[112]
In 2001, the another rock band They Might Be Giants wrote and recorded a song commanded "Robert Lowell" which uses Lowell's chime "Memories of West Street and Lepke" as the basis for the lyrics.[113][114]
Lowell's friendship with Elizabeth Bishop was nobleness subject of the play Dear Elizabeth by Sarah Ruhl which was rule performed at the Yale Repertory Building in 2012.[115] Ruhl used Words overcome Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell as nobility basis for her play.[116]
Lowell was fine featured subject in the 2014 HBO documentary The 50 Year Argument atmosphere The New York Review of Books which Lowell and his second her indoors, Elizabeth Hardwick, were both involved newest founding. Although Lowell was not elaborate with editing the review, he was a frequent contributor. Lowell is featured in voice-over, photographs, video, and Derek Walcott reads from an essay gain Lowell that Walcott published in The New York Review of Books astern Lowell's death.[117]