IN ROBERT LOWELL’S POETRY, I find he despaired when he lost his faith. I write Rosellen. “Someone should have warned Lowell that developing himself as a writer would demand such brutal self-honesty that he would never be able to embrace religion wholeheartedly again. I wish I could have warned him. I would have told him that the vision writing required of you is going to break down all of your illusions, your props against the wind. Stop! I want to tell him, because faith is our most precious illusion, impossibly fragile when the screen obscuring the world is removed. Stop! Because you can’t
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