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As he recovered from a mental breakdown following the death of his mother in 1954, Robert Lowell began the struggle to reconstruct his identity in a world without the powerful figures of his parents. Experimenting with various linguistic treatments over the rest of the decade, Lowell produced the work that would become his most famous volume, "Life Studies". Terri Witek uses unpublished drafts of some of the most famous passages in "Life Studies" to show what happened when Lowell confronted his own identity problem as writing problems. Witek examines Lowell's pattern of revising away from the vivid presences that had shaped his identity and his work towards a carefully negotiated position of poetic power. The book also treats the delicate maneuovering Lowell engages in as he moves into the next generation and presents himself as uneasy husband and father at the end of "Life Studies". What emerges through the process of Lowell's revisions is an entirely identifiable poetic voice that yearns toward, but will not allow, anything beyond its power. This provocative study should be welcomed by all Lowell enthusiasts, as well as by scholars and students of modern poetry. ... Read more

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This major interpretation of the life and art of Robert Lowell exposes the full relationship between the poetry and the personal and national experience to which it is so remarkably connected. Steven Axelrod proposes that the key to our understanding of Lowell's poetic achievement lies precisely in this interpretation of his life and art. Making extensive use of primary sources never before studied by scholars, including Lowell's manuscript drafts of his poems and his unpublished notebooks, essays, and letters, Steven Axelrod adds significantly to our understanding of Lowell's underlying belief that "the artist's existence becomes his art." --- from book's back cover ... Read more

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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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great package of tape & texts & introductory essay
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, readby Lowell in very high-quality recordings.The texts for all the poems hereads are provided in an elegant booklet that sits in a convenient pocketin the tape-case, and J.D. McClatchy provides an extremely useful,thoughtful introduction to Lowell's poetry.I'm very happy to have it formyself, but I think it would would be perfect for students as well. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Publisher: Boston, E.P. Dutton and Company; Publication date: 1864; Subjects: American poetry; History / United States / General; Literary Criticism / Poetry; ... Read more

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Robert Lowell was regarded by many as the greatest American poet of his generation. "Somehow or other...in the middle of our worst century so far," his contemporary and friend Elizabeth Bishop wrote, "we have produced a magnificent poet." The scion of a distinguished New England family, Lowell crafted his poetry to comment on the nation's fate and even to influence the course of American politics. Along with Anne Sexton, John Berryman, and Sylvia Plath, he was a pioneer in the movement later known as Confessional Poetry, and his political gestures were often timely and controversial: his refusal of President Johnson's invitation to the White House came to symbolize the opposition of writers and intellectuals to the Vietnam War. Since Lowell's death in 1977, his reputation has suffered a decline; yet arguably no poet living today writes with the same authority, the same sense of grandeur.
Robert Lowell's Life and Work: Damaged Grandeur is a critical memoir by acclaimed poet Richard Tillinghast, a friend and student of Lowell's in the 1960s. Tillinghast shows how Lowell's gift for the grand gesture was tragically intertwined with the manic-depressive illness that afflicted him throughout his adult life- hence the "damaged grandeur" of the title. This book offers a radical re- examination of Lowell's poetic career and argues for the restoration of this complex and troubled poet to a pre-eminent position in American letters.
Richard Tillinghast's books of poetry include Our Flag was Still There, Sewanee in Ruins, The Knife and Other Poems, and Sleep Watch. He writes regularly for The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, and The New Republic. He is Professor of English, University of Michigan.
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Peter Nohrnberg asks how and why a collection of lyrics is transformed into a unified book. The topic is largely unexplored, and is important in several theoretical dimensions. Also, it activates an additional level of attention in the reading of lyric volumes. Nohrnberg's subject is not the lyric sequence, a recognized form, but the ordinary collections of poems. For his examples the author dwells on W. B. Yeats's The Tower and Robert Lowell's Life Studies. As Nohrnberg applies the distinction between poets of product and poets of process not to individual poems but to books of poems, he breaks new ground. His methods of reading books as well as poems will surely be imitated and extended by others. Among the especially productive concepts are that the first and last poems in the volume perform functions of framing, inaugurating, anticipating, summarizing, etc., and that one or more poems in the collection mirror the self-reflection and the reader's experience of the book as a whole. He also explores the parallel or repeating structures and forms, implied plots, and interwoven motifs and themes. Winner of both the undergraduate Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize and the LeBaron Russell Briggs Prize, this thesis offers marvelously fresh, perceptive comments on particular poems within these volumes.