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Robert Lowell

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Born: February 28 1917

Died: 1111 09 19771977

Robert Lowell, born Robert Traill Spence Lowell, IV, was an American poet whose works, confessional in nature, engaged with the questions of history and probed the dark recesses of the self. He is generally considered to be among the greatest American poets of the twentieth century.

His first and second books, Land of Unlikeness and Lord Weary's Castle , were influenced by his conversion from Episcopalianism to Catholicism and explored the dark side of America's Puritan legacy.

Under the influence of Allen Tate and the New Critics, he wrote rigorously formal poetry that drew praise for its exceptionally powerful handling of meter and rhyme. Lowell was politically involved—he became a conscientious objector during the Second World War and was imprisoned as a result, and actively protested against the war in Vietnam—and his personal life was full of marital and psychological turmoil. He suffered from severe episodes of manic depression, for which he was repeatedly hospitalized.

Partly in response to his frequent breakdowns, and partly due to the influence of such younger poets as W. D. Snodgrass and Allen Ginsberg, Lowell in the mid-fifties began to write more directly from personal experience, and loosened his adherence to traditional meter and form. The result was a watershed collection, Life Studies , which forever changed the landscape of modern poetry, much as Eliot's The Waste Land had three decades before.

Considered by many to be the most important poet in English of the second half of the twentieth century, Lowell continued to develop his work with sometimes uneven results, all along defining the restless center of American poetry, until his sudden death from a heart attack at age 60. Robert Lowell served as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1962 until his death in 1977.

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Robert Lowell

Robert Lowell

Books from Robert Lowell

Life Studies

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

Selected Poems

Dear Elizabeth

For the Union Dead

Imitations

Lord Weary's Castle: The Mills of the Kavanaughs

The Dolphin

Notebook

The Letters of Robert Lowell

Selected Poems: Expanded Edition: Including Selections from Day by Day

The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle

From a Terrace in Prague

Robert Lowell's Poems: A Selection

The Old Glory: Endecott and the Red Cross; My Kinsman, Major Molineux; and Benito Cereno

The Dolphin: Two Versions, 1972-1973

Poesie 1940-1970

BAFFLING MYSTERIES #10 VINTAGE COMIC ILLUSTRATED

For Lizzie and Harriet

Poezje