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Rating: 
Summary: Important with a capital 'I'
Review: For a long time, one of my favorite poems has been Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour", but I have never read the book which was the context around it. Lowell is one of those writers who are often pushed down your throat as being "The Most Important Poet Ever!" by college professors and I have to admit that this attitude lead me to resist reading further. I want to say that this was a mistake, because of how much I enjoyed this book, but I'm not sure how well I could have appreciated these poetry books had I been younger. They are not simple about anything they touch-- not histories (public or private), not love, not death, not depression. They are complicated words that are painted in detailed layers, so the richness gets deeper the longer you look. The setting is so subtle that when Lowell does say something overt, it comes as a distinct shock. I didn't want to stop reading the book when it was over, and went back and started reading the poems again-- it was that compelling.
Rating:
Summary: Important with a capital 'I'
Review: For a long time, one of my favorite poems has been Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour", but I have never read the book which was the context around it. Lowell is one of those writers who are often pushed down your throat as being "The Most Important Poet Ever!" by college professors and I have to admit that this attitude lead me to resist reading further. I want to say that this was a mistake, because of how much I enjoyed this book, but I'm not sure how well I could have appreciated these poetry books had I been younger. They are not simple about anything they touch-- not histories (public or private), not love, not death, not depression. They are complicated words that are painted in detailed layers, so the richness gets deeper the longer you look. The setting is so subtle that when Lowell does say something overt, it comes as a distinct shock. I didn't want to stop reading the book when it was over, and went back and started reading the poems again-- it was that compelling.
Rating:
Summary: One of America's finest poets at the peak of his powers.
Review: In LIFE STUDIES, published in 1959, Lowell described his experiences growing up in a prominent Boston family, using a style so intimate and revealing that it became known as "confessional poetry." Four years later came FOR THE UNION DEAD, in which he used the same style to address social themes as well as personal ones. Together, these two books constitute a watershed in modern American poetry. In a host of poems, including "Beyond the Alps," "Skunk Hour," and "For the Union Dead," Lowell created a style that was colloquial and contemporary, but echoed the grandeur of a poetic tradition running back to Shakespeare. Of all the American poets to emerge since the war, few have had the wide-ranging influence of Lowell and a young student of his named Sylvia Plath. This is a book that every literate American should know.
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Poet
Review: Lowell is of the vanguard of American twentieth century poets, a man who created many brilliant works other than the two joined in this volume. In such poems in Life Studies as Beyond the Alps and A Mad Negro Soldier Confined in Munich, as well as his portraits of various friends and family, we discover a man capable of both acid humor and outright sadness. However, in Life Studies, these excellent poems are overshadowed by the towering biographical essay 91 Revere Street. In this touching memoir, Lowell describes distant, illustrious relatives, Amy Lowell being a famous but ostracized example, friendships wrecked in childhood, disquietude over a girlfriend who soils herself in class (in his embarrassment, Lowell sits in it), his formative years on the periphery of polite, conservative Bostonian society, and his fathers coarse, difficult superiors and buddies that cropped up in the father's job with the Navy. Though his poems here are outstanding, an uncomfortable question arises when one considers this essay: Would Lowell have been better off to employ his time as a prose stylist, not a poet? For the Union Dead validates Lowell's decision to declare poetry his mode of expression. Poems such as the dolorous My Last Evening with Uncle Devereaux Winslow and Terminal Days at Beverly Farm expose a man groping for hope after the deaths of close relatives; Waking in the Blue and Myopia: A night explore, respectively, Lowell's mental illness and attendant three month hospitalization, and a night of insomnia that becomes a maelstrom of tortured reflections and half-hewn thoughts; The Drinker explores alcoholism as a product of foiled love, with a question as to whether pathology or sheer carelessness and love of idleness is the underlying shibboleth. Water, the poem that stoked my love for Lowell, uses a maritime theme to express sorrow over a lost love. Beyond the Alps, from Life Studies, is reprised here with an elided stanza reinserted at the behest of coeval John Berryman. Lowell is one of those poets so gifted, so erudite, so steeped in classical literature, it's hard to grasp that, as he explains it, he was "less rather than more bookish than most children." Much of the isolation evinced in Lowell's poetry, as well as the restlessness of his life, both as youth and adult, are radiantly eviscerated in these two collections.
Rating:
Summary: Girls and Undesirables
Review: Most of us probably first read Robert Lowell in high school, and I remember being both repulsed and fascinated by Life Studies when I was a teenager. I am no longer repulsed, but simply fascinated by Lowell's writing. Life Studies' haunting biographies of Lowell's relatives frame the poet's autobiographical memoir of growing up with "no girls or undesirables in [his] set"; his attention to detail constantly mesmerizes the reader as we tour a New England catalogue of memorabilia, illness, and affect. Lowell's resolutely melancholy, nostalgic, and idiosycratic tone reminds the reader that poetry may speak most generally when it is most particular in its subject. I've spent twenty years thinking about these poems, and the thoughts are never stale, even if the lives they chronicle are preternaturally decayed.
Rating:
Summary: Girls and Undesirables
Review: Most of us probably first read Robert Lowell in high school, and I remember being both repulsed and fascinated by Life Studies when I was a teenager. I am no longer repulsed, but simply fascinated by Lowell's writing. Life Studies' haunting biographies of Lowell's relatives frame the poet's autobiographical memoir of growing up with "no girls or undesirables in [his] set"; his attention to detail constantly mesmerizes the reader as we tour a New England catalogue of memorabilia, illness, and affect. Lowell's resolutely melancholy, nostalgic, and idiosycratic tone reminds the reader that poetry may speak most generally when it is most particular in its subject. I've spent twenty years thinking about these poems, and the thoughts are never stale, even if the lives they chronicle are preternaturally decayed.
Rating:
Summary: an american giant at his best
Review: Robert Lowell is a giant in American poetry. He is pretty much unanimously considered one of the best of his generation. This book combines two of his volumes of poetry. One of those volumes is his masterpiece Life Studies--the reason why he is a giant in American poetry. This is his seminal work. No matter how you look at it, this is an important book of poetry. And an excellent book of poetry. Most of the poems are good and there are several phenomenal poems within. Life Studies alone belongs on any serious poetry connoisseur's shelf. Also in this book is arguably Lowell's second best collection (only Lord Weary's Castle might be better) For the Union Dead, which contains another masterpiece, "For the Union Dead" (and a favorite of mine "Hawthorne"). This is a book that poetry lovers of all kinds should have.
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