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

by Robert Lowell, Frank Bidart (Foreword by)

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 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."

Genres: Poetry, 20th Century, American, Collections, Fiction, Classics, The United States Of America

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

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 (1944) and Lord Weary's Castle (for which he received a Pulitzer Prize in 1947, at the age of thirty), 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 (1959), 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.

Reviews

[William2]

For some reason, I just noticed, I tend not to review poetry, or even to list what I’ve read. This, toward a change in unproductive habits.

[Zuberino · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the very start of this volume, the five short pages of "Quaker Graveyard", Lowell has me in his thrall. I intuit instinctively the beguiling similarities between him and my favourite poet - the layers upon layers of meaning piled high in each phrase and each line; the titanic clash of consonants that leave the reader's tongue coated thick and his emotions spent; the open call of the Atlantic that lured both Lowell's ancestors and Walcott's Shabine, separated though they were by 2000 miles of the same briny deep. Cold bracing winds for one, lush tropic warmth for the other.

And then - and then! - what do you know, I discover that Lowell was actually a major influence on Walcott, as is detailed quite lovingly in this essay by Prof. Gargaillo. I have yet to plough through the rest of this short, select volume but I think I already know how I feel about Lowell's verse! More soon.

https://www.literarymatters.org/10-1-...

*

So having finished the book - Lowell is doubtless difficult. I like him best in his native milieu - the Boston Brahmin whose ancestry goes back way past the Founding Fathers all the way to the Pilgrims. That austere New England Protestantism, spurning austentation but no less wealthy or powerful for all that. It's a worldview, a way of being that is encoded into his very genes. That is the Lowell of Life Studies, Lowell at his most readable. (Indian Killer, Marie Therese, Propertius or Falling
Asleep before that were NOT easy reads.) In Life Studies, Lowell remembers his grandparents, uncles and aunts, draws portraits of his mother and father. Recalls the aftermath of their passing. His jail stint, his madness, returning home from the asylum. Poems of married life, marital strife. Lowell does autobiography in poetry as well as anyone in the business - as good as Walcott or Larkin or Heaney.

If I were to have one slight niggle, it would be that he lacks that miraculous ability that you often find in Walcott and especially Larkin to blow you away with a word or a phrase, to make your knees buckle with an unexpected emotion. Lowell operates not only maybe with a steadier temperament but also less harrowing insight or emotional impact. A true Puritan, to the very last?

PS loved the poem about the eye-mote! Is there another in the language, any language???

[Abeer Abdullah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always heard about robert lowell being a big influence on some of my favorite poets
including anne sexton, sylvia plath, and Elizabeth bishop.
and naturally I had anticipated his work greatly and for a long time, sexton and bishop share a straigh forward, simple and heartbreaking style of confessional poetry, but i think plath is the one that resembles lowell the most (they're all confessional though)
the first few poems i was very disappointed, it felt like a long poem of fancy sounding fillers which normally i would enjoy it simply for it's sound but it's being lowell and my Huge expectations i was disappointed,
but i kept on reading, granted it took me a while to get though it, but i felt i owed the father of my mothers a read.
as i kept reading i felt that i was slowly decoding his complex style and was literally very overwhelmed by how beautiful it is.
it felt like a magnificently put together out pour of a sensitive young man and his impression on the world.
great poetry makes me feel so privileged to be alive and capable of sitting down and reading.
and I rarely ever feel grateful to be alive I'm sad to say, and i suppose this is why I love poetry so much. it feels like a purpose. and a very nobel and beautiful one.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Lowell is widely considered to be a major poet and I am widely considered to not know much about poetry so it probably doesn’t mean much when I say that I really didn’t like the majority of his output. I found it annoyingly formal for the mid 20th century, overly blue-blooded and waspish, and devoid of joy, just extremely depressive, the poems almost dead. There were a few things to enjoy, but it was overall a struggle. Having started his career by 1938, I finally found that missing joy by the time I got to the 1970s, especially in the selections from The Dolphin which I liked very much. If this were a novel I would immediately move it to the sell/donate stack, but I believe in having a large poetry section in my personal library.

[Lorraine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Goodbye, Selected Poems of Robert Lowell. The space you left behind on the bookshelf was instantly subsumed by other volumes.

May another reader find your mythologizing of New England, your riffs on classical antiquity, and your disquisitions on the dissolution of your marriage as riveting as I find them tedious.

Also, for the love of all that is holy, who greenlighted that cover pose? *full body shudder*

[Ally Atherton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always had a love hate relationship with poetry. I really don't like the kind of stuff like makes no sense whatsoever and is filled with nods to greek mythology and other so called 'intellectual' rambleshit. I don't want to read poetry if you have to have a masters degree in ancient history to understand it.

However this collection of poetry is superb. There were a few pieces at the beginning that tested my patience but the main bulk of the poetry in the collection are pretty amazing. Most of them are based on Robert's life as a young man and his family. there are lots of good poems to enjoy but my favourite was Night Sweat

An enthralling collection for anybody who likes poetry.


4/5

[Gwilym · Rating 4 out of 5]

Used to be I didn't much care for 'confessional poets' or New England poets. However, Lowell is so capable and talented a writer, he is impossible to ignore. Furthermore, I like his writing! I don't find it confessional, or if I do, it is so overwhelmed with other attributes beyond mere confessionality that I can't hold it against.

[Meg]

what i learned from this book is that perhaps burt reynolds lifted his playgirl poses from lowell's author photo.

true story.

[Carol]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14106345

[justin, the geezer]

his earliest work is his best: brutal use of sound, irony abounds, interesting rhythm, propulsive, dark, gritty, ruggedly euphonious. the poems then move toward a confessional mode, a supplanting (or at least how i feel about it) of substance and style for an amalgamation, half-comprehensible anecdotes, voices, sensations, thoughts, all strung together that ultimately doesn’t work for me. though that’s not to say there aren’t plenty of great poems there, i’d just much rather read the earlier stuff, i find it much more interesting. the sonnets, on the other hand, are grueling, schizophrenic ramblings that are terrible to get through. they jerk and then sag and then limp and then jerk some more all before you get through 14 lines and you wonder, what/who the hell was that for? perhaps it’s all over my head and they’re all extremely erudite and incredibly stylistic and groundbreaking and i’m a shmuck but alas, i’m over it.

[shauna · Rating 4 out of 5]

i've been on a bit of a poetry kick, and i was afraid collections would inevitably start blending together, or becoming unremarkable. however. lowell's retellings and "life studies" were so charming, dark, and singular that i was genuinely blown away at points (my favorite was 'falling asleep at the aenid'), and i want so badly to go through and analyze how on earth this man crafted such compelling yet richly worded stories while maintaining the tension he did?? this collection struck some kind of chord within me (probably because most of it was read at a park at sunrise with tchaikovsky playing) and i would absolutely recommend, and i totally get why he is such a common name in the influences of other famous authors.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting compilation. My favourite poems were Mr Edwards and the Spider, Adam and Eve, and The Ghost, in that order.

[Justin Whitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I come on walking off-stage backwards."

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection seems to have little bearing on the original Selected Poems, published in 1965. It is a shame that the title couldn't have been something different... This expanded edition is a selection of what the editor thought were the best poems in each of Lowell's major books (including the original Selected Poems which was probably my least favorite part) and thus is more of a "best of" collection.

The editor has done a marvelous job with the notes in the appendix, and I also recommend reading the introduction (for once -- generally I dislike introductions!).

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Where are you? You were with me and are gone.”- “Katherine’s Dream”

“In the end,
the water was too cold for us.”- “Water”

“I feel my old infection, it comes once yearly:
lowered good humor, then an ominous
rise of irritable enthusiasm…”- “Symptoms”

“You’re gone; I am learning to live in history.
What is history? What you cannot touch.”- “Mexico”

“how can I love you more,
short of turning into a criminal?”- “Mexico”

“This winter, I thought
I was created to be given away.”- “Thanks-Offering for Recovery”

“But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All’s misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?”- “Epilogue”

[Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Lowell, the founding father of the Confessional School of modern poetry, is an inescapable figure for the serious poetry enthusiast. The crucial books are “Life Studies” and “For the Union Dead,” but the “Selected Poems” is the perfect place to start if one wants a good broad overview of his career. When Boston Brahmin Lowell, whose famous family were a Who’s Who of American history and culture, wrote of his madness, his heartache, his marital problems, his ancestors, it seemed as if his poems were x-rays of the disintegrating soul of America itself.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The early poems from Lord Weary’s Castle (1946) are very tedious, but as Lowell becomes more emotionally fluent and proficient with his craft, his voice becomes more clear and resonant.

Favorite Poems:
“For Sale”
“Sailing Home from Rapallo”
“Myopia: a Night”
“The Drinker” (Wow!)
“Night Sweat”
“For the Union Dead”
“Near the Ocean 1. Waking Early Sunday Morning”
“Searching”
“Will Not Come Back”
“Obit”
“Fall Weekend at Milgate”
“Records”

[Ami · Rating 5 out of 5]

So amazing.

[Jenni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-edited selected poems.

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some decent verse. I have read worse.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Puritan poems. Confessional poems. Robert Lowell, you slay me.

[James Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This most serious poetry strongly effects me, much like that of Whitman or Dickinson. The range, gravity, and deep meaning that imbue Lowell's poetry remain in the mind long after reading.

[Ashley Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

A needed collection for any lover of poetry during this era.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ho hum.