The Poetry of Robert Lowell
The poetry of Robert Lowell explores profound themes of personal and national identity, often framed by his Catholic background and his reflections on historical events. His first major collection, *Lord Weary's Castle*, employs intricate metrical forms and rich language to convey a vision of destruction, reflecting his disillusionment with societal and moral issues, particularly in the context of World War II. As his work evolved, particularly in *Life Studies*, Lowell shifted to a more personal style, delving into family history, mental struggles, and his complex relationship with Boston, while adopting a more conversational tone influenced by contemporaries like Elizabeth Bishop and Allen Ginsberg.
In *Notebook*, Lowell captures the immediacy of experience and personal reflections against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, although this focus on the present caused him to lose some connection to his past. His later work, *For the Union Dead*, intertwines autobiography with American history, addressing the anxieties of urban life and the threats posed by technological advancements and nuclear war. Through his political poetry, Lowell critiques the political landscape of his time, striving to illuminate the interconnectedness of the personal and political dimensions of existence, ultimately aiming to empower readers with a deeper understanding of their own identities.
The Poetry of Robert Lowell
First published:Lord Weary’s Castle, 1946; Life Studies, 1959; For the Union Dead, 1964; Notebook 1967-68, 1969
The Work
In his first major collection, Lord Weary’s Castle, Robert Lowell contextualizes his Catholicism, his aversion to World War II, and his antagonism to mercantile Boston with an Irish ballad about the little man’s exploitation by an immoral, all-powerful country. With demanding, intricate metrical forms and artificially charged language, the poems display Lowell’s characteristic themes of personal, national, and historical self-destruction in the face of eternal suffering. The poems unfold a “vision of destruction.” A sense of despair flows into such apocalyptic conclusions as, “The Lord survives the rainbow of His will.” In such poems as “Mr. Edwards and the Spider” and “A Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket,” however, this despair provides the defiant, life-giving force for the believer’s self-reliant intellect, which is unafraid to face its own paradoxes.
In Life Studies, Lowell’s style becomes less “distant, symbol-ridden, and willfully difficult,” and his subjects become more personal (family history, mental breakdowns, and marital difficulties). The poet feeds on his own psychology and history. “Beyond the Alps” recalls Lowell’s sad departure from Catholicism; “Memories of West Street and Lepke” narrates Lowell’s prison experience during World War II. Life Studies primarily records, in psychological portraits of his childhood, his parents, and his wives, his changed attitude toward Boston. He assumes the city’s weakness and vulnerability for himself. He opens his tight metrical forms for the freer forms, the precise descriptions, and the conversational style he found in the work of Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, and Allen Ginsberg. Lowell tried to recapture the immediate success of Life Studies in Notebook, a diary of his reading, his personal life, and his poetic condemnations of the Vietnam War. In focusing on “always the instant, something changing to the lost,” however, he abandoned the powerful connection to the past.
For the Union Dead represents Lowell’s third distinct manner of linking experience and identity. In this work, consciousness is subject matter itself. He records key images of past and present events in poems such as “Neo-Classical Urn” and “For the Union Dead.” Integrating American history and his autobiography, Lowell explains the terrors of urban life. He describes technological advancement and spiritual emptiness, powerlessness, isolation and social antagonism, all perpetually threatened by nuclear annihilation. In such political poems as “July in Washington,” for example, Lowell uses his sense of the United States’ traditions to criticize the evasive politics of the Eisenhower years. The poet as historian aims to give readers essential knowledge of themselves; this was Lowell’s primary, yet unattainable, goal. He sought to make the personal the political, and the political the personal, and to charge both with a productive despair.
Bibliography
Axelrod, Steven Gould. Robert Lowell: Life and Art. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Tillinghast, Richard. Robert Lowell’s Life and Work: Damaged Grandeur. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Williamson, Alan. Pity the Monsters: The Political Vision of Robert Lowell. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974.