Giant finned cars nose forward like fish

[yendi]

I've been slowly and joyfully rediscovering the poems of Robert Lowell.

I somehow made it through high school without reading him, thanks to (otherwise competent) teachers who avoided 20th century poetry* (the trade-off being an amazingly thorough grounding in pre-1900 poets). I spent most of my college years enjoying the works of Frost and Williams, with a brief diversion into the poetry of the 1980s and early 90s (Olds, Lux, etc). I finally read some Lowell when I discovered Plath and Sexton, and I was blown away by him then, but he somehow slipped away from me, and faded from memory.

And weirdly, he seems to have done that for America as a whole. We're talking about someone who won a pair of Pulitzers, who was considered the best poet of his generation, and who was pretty much on a par with Robert Frost at one point in terms of being recognized as The American Poet of the 20th Century. His influence on folks like Plath and Sexton, as well as the vast numbers of folks who mimic them, is undeniable. Much as I love both Frost and Williams (and I do, a whole hell of a lot), Lowell had a way with language that American poetry hadn't seen since Whitman. But he practically vanished from the American psyche just a few short years after his death.

I only recently thought of him again thanks to reading the glowing reviews of his Letters, which has now been added to my wishlist (the fact that a good chunk of the collection consists of letters to the equally wonderful Elizabeth Bishop isn't a bad thing, either).

Rediscovering his works, I'm just amazed by how much emotion he can convey so simply. "For the Union Dead" (a beautiful dedication to fellow Bostonian Colonel Robert Shaw, best known to most folks as the guy played by Matt Broderick in Glory) is the one work that everyone seems to have encountered, but his other works are all wonderful. The poem below was one of his last, a look at his own career.



Epilogue

Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme--
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with dim eyes and threadbare art
seems a snapshot
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.


Yeah, I'll be getting that collection of letters next time money/gift certificates come my way.

*Except Frank O'Hara, who we read in an advanced course on New York literature.

Comments

[robyn-ma.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, this entry quotes poetry and has nothing about comics, horror movies, or how [insert corporation here] are pigfuckers. What have you done with yendi? ;)

[yendi]

Damn. I went off-script again.

[robyn-ma.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you need your own Karl Rove. :)

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

That's lovely. Yea, I did an M.F.A. in poetry and still don't know Lowell very well at all. Should have taken FavoriteCrustyOldProfessor's mid-20th century poetry classes, as I'm sure Lowell was one of the poets that he loved to complain that "young poets today" aren't familiar with. My undergraduate work was rather heavily slanted towards the 16th-19th centuries, and then very contemporary stuff, so when I took my M.F.A. exam, I had to fill in alot of 20th century modernists.

Who are some of your other favorites?

[yendi]

For the most part, I'm a fan of the big names of the 20th century -- Frost, Williams, Lowell, Sexton, Plath. I'm a huge fan of Erica Jong's works (very underrated as a poet), and of Wendy Cope over the Atlantic. And the aforementioned Frank O'Hara, of course. Of the more contemporary folks, definitely Sharon Olds, Jorie Graham, Thom Lux, and Louise Gluck (you must read her Meadowlands).