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Life Studies: and, For the Union Dead
This popular volume collects two of Lowell's finest books of poetry.
169 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
17 people are currently reading
1274 people want to read
About the author
Robert Lowell
182 books269 followersRobert 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
June 19, 2009
This review is cross-posted from my blog, so forgive the rather overwhelming length.
I’ve been a bad, bad little aspiring poet. Naughtily, I’ve avoided reading a single collection of poetry—by a male writer—in all my years of writing, and, perhaps more criminally, done so even throughout the entirety of my undergraduate English experience. So I figure, hey, it’s time to catch up on my weaker points, as I head into graduate school; I order Robert Lowell and John Berryman, brush off the dust collecting on my unread Ted Hughes, and consider grabbing a few others—Randall Jarrell, Hart Crane, W.S. Merwin, Stanley Kunitz—from half.com (these are all still on my wishlist, darlings). Well, Lowell was the first I’ve come to, and he’s likely my most glaring error. Though I profess my undying admiration for the school of confessionalism, I’ve somehow evaded Lowell, one of the founding fathers of this ‘school,’ and indeed, the teacher of both Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath (my two favorite poets), and his collection Life Studies, which is one of the seminal works of the poetic subgenre.
Like most poetry I’ve read, however, even these two collections suffered their predecessors’ intellectual imprints—upon me, that is. Only two collections of poetry—Sexton’s Transformations and Plath’s Ariel—have ever really wowed me in their entirety. Most other books of poetry—most recently, Atwood’s Morning in the Burned House—become something like a roadtrip for me; there are a handful to a dozen poems that I want to rubberneck to, while the majority flit past like flat landscapes. Bad metaphor, I know. But perhaps fitting when I speak, all high and mighty, about my tastes in poetry. With Lowell, this was particularly the case in the latter book, For the Union Dead. Besides the eponymous poem, which is probably one of his most famous and has an absolutely thrilling dissection of Bostonian decay, and maybe three or four others, the collection left me feeling vaguely nonplussed. But hear this line, from “For the Union Dead”:
“The Aquarium is gone. / Everywhere, / giant finned cars nose forward like fish; / a savage servility / slides by on grease.”
As I said, there are gems that glitter through. And it’s not to say that the rest are bad, or even bland, just somewhat unmemorable. What I find with Lowell, which is less the case with his protégés Plath and Sexton, is that his command of language and rhythm and rhyme are awe-inspiring, but that his images don’t stick in your craw the way the others’ often do. I think of Sexton’s stepmother in “Cinderella” who fries upward ‘like a frog’ in her red hot iron shoes, or Plath’s suffocating girl-self in the Nazi boot of her towering father in “Daddy” (though I guess “Daddy” is a bit of a cheap shot, because who doesn’t remember that tempestuous, bloody poem?). Lowell’s images are less striking, but his language—to borrow Plath again—sticks in my jaw. I wrote a poem last night and saw the almost Beat-like insistence of Lowell tracing through. The flow of his work is incomparable.
Life Studies fares better. It’s divided into four parts, the second of which is a prose memoir that illuminates a lot of the poems that follow in part IV. His prose style is surprisingly readable, catchy, and frequently hilarious. I found myself completely taken with his father’s friend Billy “Bilge” Harkness, who was repulsive and boisterous and completely alluring all at once. I’m not all that familiar with Lowell, as I said, and I’d be curious to read more prose from him. And it’s that second part, as I said, that helps us work through the unwieldy names and places of Part IV (which is, too, divided in half—the former dealing more with his childhood and the lead up to his mental break, and the latter looking backwards). But the memorable poems here far outweigh the forgettable—I think of “To Speak of the Woe That is In Marriage,” with the battered wife, and her prostitute-craving husband—the poem ends with a strangely conflicting image of his sexual violence as an almost impotent elephant ‘stalling’ above her. “Skunk Hour” is of course a direct descendant of Elizabeth Bishop, and borrows from her beautifully (if I recall, he was thinking of her poem “The Armadillo”). “Memories of West Street and Lepke” recounts a bit from within the mental institution, but in a very different way to someone like Sexton’s haunting and bodily reminiscences.
Again, there are poems that I waded through, and those that kicked me in the gut. At least I can say with greater certainty that I understand why Life Studies is such a significant work of modern poetry, and so powerful a text for the confessional genre. I can only imagine repeated readings will render that impression more fully. I’ll leave you with a verse that particularly stood out to me, as I was looking back over this to write this review. This is written from the perspective of Marie de Medici, after her husband (Henri IV) is assassinated, and she’s been exiled by her son:
“O tension, groin, and backbone! Every night
I kicked the pillows and embroidered lies
to rob my husband’s purse. I said his eyes
flew kiting to my dormer from the blue.
I was a sparrow. He was fifty-two.”
I’ve been a bad, bad little aspiring poet. Naughtily, I’ve avoided reading a single collection of poetry—by a male writer—in all my years of writing, and, perhaps more criminally, done so even throughout the entirety of my undergraduate English experience. So I figure, hey, it’s time to catch up on my weaker points, as I head into graduate school; I order Robert Lowell and John Berryman, brush off the dust collecting on my unread Ted Hughes, and consider grabbing a few others—Randall Jarrell, Hart Crane, W.S. Merwin, Stanley Kunitz—from half.com (these are all still on my wishlist, darlings). Well, Lowell was the first I’ve come to, and he’s likely my most glaring error. Though I profess my undying admiration for the school of confessionalism, I’ve somehow evaded Lowell, one of the founding fathers of this ‘school,’ and indeed, the teacher of both Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath (my two favorite poets), and his collection Life Studies, which is one of the seminal works of the poetic subgenre.
Like most poetry I’ve read, however, even these two collections suffered their predecessors’ intellectual imprints—upon me, that is. Only two collections of poetry—Sexton’s Transformations and Plath’s Ariel—have ever really wowed me in their entirety. Most other books of poetry—most recently, Atwood’s Morning in the Burned House—become something like a roadtrip for me; there are a handful to a dozen poems that I want to rubberneck to, while the majority flit past like flat landscapes. Bad metaphor, I know. But perhaps fitting when I speak, all high and mighty, about my tastes in poetry. With Lowell, this was particularly the case in the latter book, For the Union Dead. Besides the eponymous poem, which is probably one of his most famous and has an absolutely thrilling dissection of Bostonian decay, and maybe three or four others, the collection left me feeling vaguely nonplussed. But hear this line, from “For the Union Dead”:
“The Aquarium is gone. / Everywhere, / giant finned cars nose forward like fish; / a savage servility / slides by on grease.”
As I said, there are gems that glitter through. And it’s not to say that the rest are bad, or even bland, just somewhat unmemorable. What I find with Lowell, which is less the case with his protégés Plath and Sexton, is that his command of language and rhythm and rhyme are awe-inspiring, but that his images don’t stick in your craw the way the others’ often do. I think of Sexton’s stepmother in “Cinderella” who fries upward ‘like a frog’ in her red hot iron shoes, or Plath’s suffocating girl-self in the Nazi boot of her towering father in “Daddy” (though I guess “Daddy” is a bit of a cheap shot, because who doesn’t remember that tempestuous, bloody poem?). Lowell’s images are less striking, but his language—to borrow Plath again—sticks in my jaw. I wrote a poem last night and saw the almost Beat-like insistence of Lowell tracing through. The flow of his work is incomparable.
Life Studies fares better. It’s divided into four parts, the second of which is a prose memoir that illuminates a lot of the poems that follow in part IV. His prose style is surprisingly readable, catchy, and frequently hilarious. I found myself completely taken with his father’s friend Billy “Bilge” Harkness, who was repulsive and boisterous and completely alluring all at once. I’m not all that familiar with Lowell, as I said, and I’d be curious to read more prose from him. And it’s that second part, as I said, that helps us work through the unwieldy names and places of Part IV (which is, too, divided in half—the former dealing more with his childhood and the lead up to his mental break, and the latter looking backwards). But the memorable poems here far outweigh the forgettable—I think of “To Speak of the Woe That is In Marriage,” with the battered wife, and her prostitute-craving husband—the poem ends with a strangely conflicting image of his sexual violence as an almost impotent elephant ‘stalling’ above her. “Skunk Hour” is of course a direct descendant of Elizabeth Bishop, and borrows from her beautifully (if I recall, he was thinking of her poem “The Armadillo”). “Memories of West Street and Lepke” recounts a bit from within the mental institution, but in a very different way to someone like Sexton’s haunting and bodily reminiscences.
Again, there are poems that I waded through, and those that kicked me in the gut. At least I can say with greater certainty that I understand why Life Studies is such a significant work of modern poetry, and so powerful a text for the confessional genre. I can only imagine repeated readings will render that impression more fully. I’ll leave you with a verse that particularly stood out to me, as I was looking back over this to write this review. This is written from the perspective of Marie de Medici, after her husband (Henri IV) is assassinated, and she’s been exiled by her son:
“O tension, groin, and backbone! Every night
I kicked the pillows and embroidered lies
to rob my husband’s purse. I said his eyes
flew kiting to my dormer from the blue.
I was a sparrow. He was fifty-two.”
May 18, 2007
A deeply difficult work to penetrate. This is not for the reader who is looking for some relaxed reading, which isn't to say this is better than some relaxed reading. Lowell is an acquired taste and can be frustrating many times. But this is one of the most thoughtful and heartbreaking works when you've taken it in its entirety and worked through the themes he develops. Part of its intensity comes from what a finely constructed work it is. This man takes on his demons.
September 13, 2022
Lowell’s always been tops for me when it comes to the New England poets. sure Sylvia Plath has a more impassioned // intense confessional style but it’s Lowell’s quiet mythologizing and restrained psychic treatment of personal details all while, in very American fashion, executing an expansion of the existential territory of poetry. five stars across the board, fuck it
Read
June 22, 2022Favorite poems:
91 Revere St
My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereaux Winslow
Skunk Hour
The Lesson
Eye and Tooth
Myopia: a Night
Jonathan Edwards in Western Massachusetts
Dropping South: Brazil
The Flaw
91 Revere St
My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereaux Winslow
Skunk Hour
The Lesson
Eye and Tooth
Myopia: a Night
Jonathan Edwards in Western Massachusetts
Dropping South: Brazil
The Flaw
March 7, 2016
"The season's ill ---"
The ur-text of Confessional poetry, the book that started it all. With “Life Studies,” Lowell opened up a whole new frontier for poetry and “fathered” a whole group of disciples/fellow inmates (see Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, etc.). Lowell’s particular stature in the American culture (he and his famous family were practically American royalty) gave these poems a great advantage …as Elizabeth Bishop ruefully put it to him, “I could write in as much detail about my Uncle Artie, say – but what would be the significance? Nothing at all.” Well, she had a point. Reading these poems today, it does seem at times as if Lowell’s versified personal traumas, family reminiscences and historical elegies were metaphors of a society in its death throes. This is rueful, naked, funny, and often extremely moving poetry.
The ur-text of Confessional poetry, the book that started it all. With “Life Studies,” Lowell opened up a whole new frontier for poetry and “fathered” a whole group of disciples/fellow inmates (see Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, etc.). Lowell’s particular stature in the American culture (he and his famous family were practically American royalty) gave these poems a great advantage …as Elizabeth Bishop ruefully put it to him, “I could write in as much detail about my Uncle Artie, say – but what would be the significance? Nothing at all.” Well, she had a point. Reading these poems today, it does seem at times as if Lowell’s versified personal traumas, family reminiscences and historical elegies were metaphors of a society in its death throes. This is rueful, naked, funny, and often extremely moving poetry.
October 21, 2025
Expected nothing less knowing his links to Plath
January 23, 2022
This collection combines two of Robert Lowell's most popular books:
Life Studies
and
For the Union Dead
...
From Life Studies ...
From For the Union Dead ...
From Life Studies ...
The snow had buried Stuyvesant.
The subways drummed the vaults. I heard
the El's green girders charge on Third,
Manhattan's truss of adament,
that groaned in ermine, slummed on want. . . .
Cyclonic zero of the word,
God of our armies, who interred
Cold Harbour's blue immortals, Grant!
Horseman, your sword is in the groove!
Ice, ice. Our wheels no longer move.
Look, the fixed stars, all just alike
as lack-land atoms, split apart,
and the Republic summons Ike,
the mausoleum in her heart.- Inauguration Day: January 1953, pg. 7
* * *
"When the Pulitzers showered on some dope
on screw who flushed our dry mouths out with soap,
few people would consider why I took
to stalking sailors, and scattered Uncle Sam's
phoney gold-plated laurels to the birds.
Because I knew my Whitman like a book,
stranger in America, tell my country: I,
Catullus redivivus, once the rage
of the Village and Paris, used to play my role
of homosexual, wolfing the stray lambs
who hungered by the Place de la Concorde.
My profit was a pocket with a hole.
Who asks for me, the Shelley of my age,
must lay his heart out for my bed and board."- Words for Hart Crane, pg. 55
* * *
They're altogether otherworldly now,
those adults champing for their ritual Friday spin
to pharmacist and five-and-ten in Brockton.
Back in my throw-away and shaggy span
of adolescence, Grandpa still waves his stick
like a policeman;
Grandmother, like a Mohammedan, still wears her thick
lavender mourning and touring veil;
the Pierce Arrow clears its throat in a horse-stall.
Then the dry road dust rises to whiten
the fatigued elm leaves -
the nineteenth century, tired of children, is gone.
They're all gone into a world of light; the farm's my own.
The farm's my own!
Back there alone,
I keep indoors, and spoil another season.
I hear the rattley little country gramophone
racking its five foot horn:
"O Summer Time!"
Even at noon here the formidable
Ancien Régime still keeps nature at a distance. Five
green shaded light bulbs spider the billiards-table;
no field is greener than its cloth,
where Grandpa, dipping sugar for us both,
once spilled his demitasse.
His favourite ball, the number three,
still hides the coffee stain.
Never again
to walk there, chalk our cues,
insist on shooting for us both.
Grandpa! Have me, hold me, cherish me!
Tears smut my fingers. There
half my life-lease later,
I hold an Illustrated London News - ;
disloyal still,
I doodle handlebar
mustache on the last Russian Czar.- Grandparents, pg. 68-69
* * *
Poor sheepish plaything,
organized with prodigal animosity,
lived in just a year -
my Father's cottage at Beverly Farms
was on the market the month he died.
Empty, open, intimate,
its town-house furniture
had an on tiptoe air
of waiting for the mover
on the heels of the undertaker.
Ready, afraid
of living alone till eighty,
Mother mooned in a window,
as if she had stayed on a train
one stop past her destination.- For Sale, pg. 76
From For the Union Dead ...
Now the midwinter grind
is on me, New York
drills my nerves,
as I walk
the chewed-up streets.
At forty-five,
what next, what next?
At every corner,
I meet my Father,
my age, still alive.
Father, forgive me
my injuries,
as I forgive
those I
have injured!
You never climbed
Mount Sion, yet left
dinosaur
death-steps on the crust,
where I must walk.- Middle Age, pg. 7
* * *
I long for the black ink,
cuttlefish, April, Communists
and brothels of Florence -
everything, even the British
fairies who haunted the hills,
even the chills and fever
that came once a month
and forced me to think.
The apple was more human there than here,
but it took a long time for the blinding
golden rind to mellow.
How vulnerable the horseshoe crabs
dredging the bottom like flat-irons
in their antique armor,
with their swordgrass blackbone tails,
made for a child to grab
and throw strangling ashore!
Oh Florence, Florence, patroness
of the lovely tyranicides!
Where the tower of the Old Palace
pierces the sky
like a hypodermic needle,
Perseus, David and Judith,
lords and ladies of the Blood,
Greek demi-gods of the Cross,
rise sword in hand
above the unshaven,
formless decapitation
of the monsters, tubs of guts,
mortifying chunks for the pack.
Pity the monsters!
Pity the monsters!
Perhaps, one always took the wrong side -
Ah, to have known, to have loved
too many Davids and Judiths!
My heart bleeds black blood for the monster.
I have seen the Gorgon.
The erotic terror
of her helpless, big bosomed body
lay like slop.
Wall-eyed, staring the despot to stone,
her served head swung
like a lantern in the victor's hand.- Florence, for Mary McCarthy, pg. 13-14
* * *
Think of Leonidas perhaps and the hoplites
glittering with liberation,
as the combed one another's golden Botticellian
hair at Thermopylae - friends and lovers,
the bride and the bridegroom -
and moved into position to die.- Epigram, for Hannah Arendt, pg. 23
* * *
This might be nature - twenty stories high,
two water tanks, tanned shingle, corsetted
by stapled pasture wire, while bed to bed,
we two, one cell here, lie
gazing into the ether's crystal ball,
sky and a sky, and sky, and sky, till death -
my heart stops . . .
This might be heaven. Years ago,
we aimed for less and settled for
a picture, out of style then and now in,
of seven daffodils. We watched them blow:
buttercup yellow were the flowers, and green
the stems as fresh paint, over them the wind,
the blousy wooden branches of the elms,
high summer in the breath that overwhelms
the termites digging in the underpinning . . .
Still over us, still in parenthesis,
this sack of hornets sopping up the flame,
still over us our breath,
sawing and pumping to the terminal,
and down below, we two, two in one waterdrop
vitalised by a needle drop of blood,
up, up, up, up and up,
soon shot, soon slugged into the overflow
that sets the wooden workshoe working here below.- New York 1962: Fragment, pg. 65
July 28, 2019
Having just finished a collection of Richard Wilbur's early poems a few days ago, I can't help but compare these two poets with one another. To me, their subjects, themes and attitudes seem diametrically opposed, but sadly, the result on me, the reader, is the same--I just don't feel much response to either's work.
Lowell seems prickly and pugnacious here. Spoiled, pissed-off. Him against everyone else. That the world would be a better place if he were in charge, but he's not, so the world is stupid.
None of that would prohibit a fellow from writing good poetry, as far as I can see, and the general consensus is that this collection is a modern classic of American poetry. I'm glad I read it. I'll probably read it again, because I just hate that poetry skips across my mind like a flat rock thrown across the water. If one considers himself or herself a fan of contemporary poetry, then this collection is probably mandatory, but I could have read the user's guide to my dishwasher and been as affected. But that's me.
If there was one poem that did have an effect, I would say that it was the poem For Sale, about selling his father's cottage after he died.
Poor sheepish plaything,
organized with prodigal animosity,
lived in just a year--
my Father's cottage at Beverly Farms
was on the market the month he died.
Empty, open, intimate,
its town-house furniture
had on a tiptoe air
of waiting for the mover
on the heels of the undertaker.
Ready, afraid
of living alone till eighty,
Mother mooned in a window,
as if she had stayed on a train
one stop past her destination.
Lowell seems prickly and pugnacious here. Spoiled, pissed-off. Him against everyone else. That the world would be a better place if he were in charge, but he's not, so the world is stupid.
None of that would prohibit a fellow from writing good poetry, as far as I can see, and the general consensus is that this collection is a modern classic of American poetry. I'm glad I read it. I'll probably read it again, because I just hate that poetry skips across my mind like a flat rock thrown across the water. If one considers himself or herself a fan of contemporary poetry, then this collection is probably mandatory, but I could have read the user's guide to my dishwasher and been as affected. But that's me.
If there was one poem that did have an effect, I would say that it was the poem For Sale, about selling his father's cottage after he died.
Poor sheepish plaything,
organized with prodigal animosity,
lived in just a year--
my Father's cottage at Beverly Farms
was on the market the month he died.
Empty, open, intimate,
its town-house furniture
had on a tiptoe air
of waiting for the mover
on the heels of the undertaker.
Ready, afraid
of living alone till eighty,
Mother mooned in a window,
as if she had stayed on a train
one stop past her destination.
December 8, 2022
The poems in Life Studies and For the Union Dead have a prose sensibility. It's not to say that they lack symbolism or metaphor, but there is a concrete feel to the symbols that Lowell uses. The effect is a very concrete sketch of the theme, whether it's a tour of a deceased father's room and his belongings, or a worksite where progress works around historical artifacts. At the same time, if you're paying attention, there are perfectly captured spiritual and emotional observations.
A grieving widow's thoughts in "For Sale":
To this day a familiar (if not often dormant) fear regarding the threat of nuclear annihilation from "Fall 1961":
Lowell captures the poet's romantic vision doomed to fall short of the ideal in "Hawthorne":
"Soft Wood" reveals a peculiar view a little reminiscent of Donne:
A grieving widow's thoughts in "For Sale":
Ready, afraid
of living alone till eighty,
Mother mooned in a window,
as if she had stayed on a train
one stop past her destination.
To this day a familiar (if not often dormant) fear regarding the threat of nuclear annihilation from "Fall 1961":
Our end drifts nearer,
the moon lifts,
radiant with terror.
The state
is a diver under a glass bell.
A father's no shield
for his child.
...
Lowell captures the poet's romantic vision doomed to fall short of the ideal in "Hawthorne":
...
The disturbed eyes rise,
furtive, foiled, dissatisfied
from meditation on the true
and insignificant.
"Soft Wood" reveals a peculiar view a little reminiscent of Donne:
...
but it's no consolation to know
the possessors seldom outlast the possessions,
once warped and mothered by their touch.
Shed skin will never fit another wearer.
...
Surely the lives of the old
are briefer than the young.
July 10, 2024
Life Studies: 4.5/5
An intensely personal collection of poems that deal with family trauma, death, and mental illness.
While a nearly flawless collection, it is disrupted by the lengthy "91 Revere Street," which details Lowell's childhood. There are some gems in this section written in prose, but it's buried in long tedious sections describing his life. However, if it is, as suggested, to be an exercise in therapy that brought about the final section of poems, then it serves that purpose well.
Highlights: the entire 4th part, which includes the terrific "Skunk Hour."
For the Union Dead: 4/5
Not as personal as "Life Studies," but a good continuation of the idea of analysing and breaking down life in New England. These poems are refined and a good departure from the intensity of "Life Studies."
Highlights: "Myopia: A Night" and "For the Union Dead."
An intensely personal collection of poems that deal with family trauma, death, and mental illness.
While a nearly flawless collection, it is disrupted by the lengthy "91 Revere Street," which details Lowell's childhood. There are some gems in this section written in prose, but it's buried in long tedious sections describing his life. However, if it is, as suggested, to be an exercise in therapy that brought about the final section of poems, then it serves that purpose well.
Highlights: the entire 4th part, which includes the terrific "Skunk Hour."
For the Union Dead: 4/5
Not as personal as "Life Studies," but a good continuation of the idea of analysing and breaking down life in New England. These poems are refined and a good departure from the intensity of "Life Studies."
Highlights: "Myopia: A Night" and "For the Union Dead."
January 28, 2024
Cualquier intento de poesía confesional se queda corto si se le añade una prosa biográfica que permita al lector entender cuáles son los eventos a los que aludes, hayan sido participe indirecto o no. Lowell, en todo caso, no pretende confesar, sino contar una época desde la que resulta difícil desprenderse del pasado. Recuerdo un poema posterior, de Day By Day, en la que escribe:
Una luz, dos, tres luces… Es de día…
Ya no necesitamos de las lámparas.
Tu coche al que vigilo nunca llega…
No podrás verme nunca como a un mirón obseso
y pendiente de ti detrás de la furtiva
mirilla de mi puerta, entrabierta mirilla.
Una luz, dos, tres luces… Es de día…
Ya no necesitamos de las lámparas.
Tu coche al que vigilo nunca llega…
No podrás verme nunca como a un mirón obseso
y pendiente de ti detrás de la furtiva
mirilla de mi puerta, entrabierta mirilla.
June 21, 2025
Oh god. I know that especially Life Studies is supposed to have been like revolutionary and very important (if not flat out foundational) for the tradition of confessional poetry, which is why I had wanted to read it for like two years at least, and well, I'm honestly kind of disappointed. I didn't like this much, there hasn't been anything particularly memorable for me, and literally the only verse (well, mostly only the first two lines) that made me stop and go back was this one in "For the Union Dead":
Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.
April 10, 2018
Most of these poems were very well-written, with breath-taking tempos and cut-glass phrasing. I almost always appreciated the jarring but oddly appropriate word choice, and the intricacy of the phrasing. But, with very few exceptions, I felt like I was wallowing in teen angst as I read these. A few poems turned outward, as in Dropping South: Brazil, and For the Union Dead, but far, far too many turned inward, and reading those poems was quite draining.
September 7, 2018
I really liked these two collections. Robert Lowell managed to transform the literary genre with his more personal "confessional" writing, with him showing the darker tones of American life, life behind the curtains. Lowell rightfully deserves his title especially when we are still using that style today.
November 4, 2019
Robert Lowell has a beautiful ear for language, especially the sound of it, even if the rhythms are sometimes stilted. The poems in both collections are both difficult to decode and relatively simple to grasp; essentially, multiple reads are rewarding.
Mid-century US poetry is pretty underrated, and Lowell is a prime example of that school.
Mid-century US poetry is pretty underrated, and Lowell is a prime example of that school.
February 25, 2022
Not a surprise due to their close friendship, but this is undeniably influenced by Elizabeth Bishop, especially toward the latter end of Life Studies. Skunk Hour and Night Sweat are the stars of the show in my opinion... how can you beat the subtle sorrow of "I dabble in the dapple of the day"?
3.75 because I'm feeling #pretentious.
3.75 because I'm feeling #pretentious.
May 31, 2024
Enjoyed experiencing the shift in Life Studies as something baldly personal breaks the surface of the poems, and it sends ripples to the rhyme and meter, feeling more playful, and honest to Lowell’s voice.
Clever, dark -and- personal, and not just in the confessional sense, but how Lowell situates himself within historical and mythological orbits with authority and irony.
Clever, dark -and- personal, and not just in the confessional sense, but how Lowell situates himself within historical and mythological orbits with authority and irony.
February 26, 2025
“and here at the altar of surrender,
I met you,
the death of thirst in my brief flesh”.
I’m certainly not the right audience for any sort of confessional poetry. I don’t want to know about anyone’s feelings ever! But my god is this ever beautiful stuff. Guess I’ll just have to get over myself and read more Lowell in the future
I met you,
the death of thirst in my brief flesh”.
I’m certainly not the right audience for any sort of confessional poetry. I don’t want to know about anyone’s feelings ever! But my god is this ever beautiful stuff. Guess I’ll just have to get over myself and read more Lowell in the future
October 20, 2020
Lowell's memoir as part of "Life Studies", 91 Revere Street, is a masterpiece of unsentimental incision and poetic marvel. Highlights of the collection include "Inauguration Day: January 1953", "Skunk Hour", "to Delmore Schwartz", and of course "For the Union Dead".
June 10, 2021
Well, I did not like that at all. I am completely disinterested in just about everything in this collection. Hardly even a line that sings to me. Fly free to the give-away pile, Robert Lowell. LOL
August 8, 2021
I didn't expect to enjoy this collection as much as I did. I originally was only going to read Life Studies, but I'm glad I decided to read For the Union Dead as well. The poems were great and the prose in Life Studies was really good.
June 14, 2022
Great confessional work. Mostly from the perspective of Lowell himself. "To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage" is one of my favorite poems in the collection. This poem is not from the perspective of Lowell.
August 8, 2024
oh i do fear lowell ate the house down with this. those poems about going to/returning from mclean’s hospital were bonkers-good. “the drinker” was insane. can def see his influence on plath and sexton and i’m so glad i read this before bu ehehehe
October 12, 2017
Skunk Hour was life changing
March 7, 2019
Аффтор человек не самый приятный. Но стихи хорошие.
November 29, 2022
Not my fav- especially the wife letters stuff - I agree with Elizabeth bishop on that one, but Lowell is quite good
July 25, 2025
LOVED Life Studies; For the Union Dead was a little more meh for me
October 25, 2021
Includes two of Lowell's poetry collections: 'Life Studies' and 'For the Union Dead.' Both collections were amazing!
December 7, 2009
The poem, "For The Union Dead" is probably enough for me to give this collection at least 3 stars. I was hestitant to give the whole collection a 5...just because the beginning of Life Studies with the faux-Joycean Portrait of the Artist section is a little tedious. However, there are still some remarkable poems in here. From "Terminal Days at Beverly Farms" to my personal favorite, "Three Months Spent Away," Lowell's work can be filled with a numbing heartbreak at times. (I hate using the term, heartbreak, but I don't know how else to describe it). I read this collection in a grad-level confessional poetry class. Everybody except for 3 or 4 people seemed to hate Lowell. I never quite understood why. His work, especially, Life Studies/For The Union Dead, have resonated with me ever since. "For The Union Dead" is a particularly savage critique of American history via the concept of urban renewal. Having grown up in Buffalo, a city ravaged by disastrous urban renewal projects and political ineptitude, that aspect of the poem resonates greatly. I also highly recommend "The Drinker," a very realistic portrayal the daily existence of an alcoholic. I often wonder how much of John Berryman is in that poem.
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