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Notebook
Hardcover book with dust jacket. this is not to be confused with Notebook that includes dates, nor its second edition. This volume drops the dates and is greatly expanded and revised. Red boards. 265 pages. This is a collection of poems.
- GenresPoetryNonfiction
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1968
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About the author
Robert Lowell
182 books268 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 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 25, 2024
2024: reread—Much as Lowell rewrote and nearly doubled the size of this work, my second reading appeared enlarged and ever capacious, the tendrils of memory and history entwined and yet perforated. A sonata on set theory evolved and the most important elements were the whirring crackle of the overdub. Hail the overdub as a bridge between the preterite and the luminous. Perhaps I spent this reading peering enviously at the epochal actors and the seismic rhythms which leave us cursed and lonely?
For the poet without direction, poetry is a way of not saying what he has to say.
The Lowell letters with Hardwick and Bishop (as well as my partial success with the Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell) informed my reading of this whirling attempt to document a person alive and, for obscure effect, worlding --as Heidegger would have regarded it, pompous redneck as the philosopher was. Alas, the poet could trace his lineage back to Plymouth Rock. Lowell freely incorporates aspects of conversations and private letters into his assemblages as context. His liberal use of this in The Dolphin: Two Versions, 1972-1973 would certainly sink him in the esteem of his peers. I am not sure if the practice here resulted in disapproval. There is a wonderful sense of historical thinking, as we look at our headlines today, they are incomprehensible except in a zig-zagging poetic sense. It isn't repetition but variations of our limited imagination.
Well worth anyone's time 4.5 stars
For the poet without direction, poetry is a way of not saying what he has to say.
The Lowell letters with Hardwick and Bishop (as well as my partial success with the Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell) informed my reading of this whirling attempt to document a person alive and, for obscure effect, worlding --as Heidegger would have regarded it, pompous redneck as the philosopher was. Alas, the poet could trace his lineage back to Plymouth Rock. Lowell freely incorporates aspects of conversations and private letters into his assemblages as context. His liberal use of this in The Dolphin: Two Versions, 1972-1973 would certainly sink him in the esteem of his peers. I am not sure if the practice here resulted in disapproval. There is a wonderful sense of historical thinking, as we look at our headlines today, they are incomprehensible except in a zig-zagging poetic sense. It isn't repetition but variations of our limited imagination.
Well worth anyone's time 4.5 stars
July 8, 2025
Certainly better than almost any book of poetry published in the past year, but also hardly a regular book of poetry. Instead, mostly oblique ruminations on his life, American society etc, with sometimes quite vivid and pointed lines and images. Wholly successful or “entertaining“? Certainly not. Worthwhile. Yes, with qualifications.
2025 reading—the book gets better with age, I guess. It’s been a good while since I read any of its heirs—History, Dolphin, Lizzie and Harriet—but I see from my review here that I pretty much despised Dolphin. Notebook 1967-68 (that is, the original Notebook) compares in some ways I think to The Cantos, and Notebook 1967-68 “wins”. It’s full of strong images, as The Cantos can be, and it’s very “personal,” and in many ways the lines don’t “open up” to the reader, but they ring: they feel like reality, even if they’re completely unparaphraseable and feel like they don’t (thank you, Pound) “cohere”. They have heft and weight, whereas the Cantos seem, most of the time, simply rambling incoherence.
2025 reading—the book gets better with age, I guess. It’s been a good while since I read any of its heirs—History, Dolphin, Lizzie and Harriet—but I see from my review here that I pretty much despised Dolphin. Notebook 1967-68 (that is, the original Notebook) compares in some ways I think to The Cantos, and Notebook 1967-68 “wins”. It’s full of strong images, as The Cantos can be, and it’s very “personal,” and in many ways the lines don’t “open up” to the reader, but they ring: they feel like reality, even if they’re completely unparaphraseable and feel like they don’t (thank you, Pound) “cohere”. They have heft and weight, whereas the Cantos seem, most of the time, simply rambling incoherence.
December 12, 2007
My all-time favorite book by Lowell.
September 28, 2010
"Notebook" is a sometimes engaging, often difficult book of blank-verse sonnets collected over the course of Lowell's lifetime by the poet himself. The sonnets are used in various ways -- as complete, discrete poems, as snapshots of larger pictures, as stanzas in near-epic works ... these are rarely love poems but almost uniformly meditations on an aspect of a thing, whether it be time, a single action, or something else. In doing so Lowell has launched an experiment that only a person with his talent, scope, and to some degree celebrity could make interesting.
A particular standout is his "The Nihilist as Hero," the first poem in the larger work "We Do What We Are":
'All our French poets can turn an inspired line,
but which has written six passable in sequence?'
said Valery. That was a happy day for Satan ...
One wants words meat-hooked from the living steer,
but the cold flame of tinfoil licks the metal log,
the beautifully unchanging fire of childhood
betraying a monotony of vision.
Life by definition breeds on change,
each season we scrap new cars and wars and women.
Sometimes when I am ill or delicate,
the pinched flame of my match turns living green,
the cornstalk in green tails and seeded tassel ...
A nihilist has to live in the world as is,
gazing the impossible summit to rubble.
"Notebook" is probably not the best introduction to Lowell. That honor would fall probably to "Life Studies" or possibly "Lord Weary's Castle."
Also, I was reading this book in line at the campus cafeteria. The sweet-faced young girl working the line watched me reading and said, "Oh ... I love Nicholas Sparks." I smiled.
A particular standout is his "The Nihilist as Hero," the first poem in the larger work "We Do What We Are":
'All our French poets can turn an inspired line,
but which has written six passable in sequence?'
said Valery. That was a happy day for Satan ...
One wants words meat-hooked from the living steer,
but the cold flame of tinfoil licks the metal log,
the beautifully unchanging fire of childhood
betraying a monotony of vision.
Life by definition breeds on change,
each season we scrap new cars and wars and women.
Sometimes when I am ill or delicate,
the pinched flame of my match turns living green,
the cornstalk in green tails and seeded tassel ...
A nihilist has to live in the world as is,
gazing the impossible summit to rubble.
"Notebook" is probably not the best introduction to Lowell. That honor would fall probably to "Life Studies" or possibly "Lord Weary's Castle."
Also, I was reading this book in line at the campus cafeteria. The sweet-faced young girl working the line watched me reading and said, "Oh ... I love Nicholas Sparks." I smiled.
May 5, 2020
Robert Lowell’s Notebook 1967-68 is whatever you want it to be. It is experimental. It is prose. It is historical journal entries. One of my issues with Notebook is the large amount of prose in the collection. Another issue I had was with the information in the book that seems like it would have been relevant to only Lowell and the people he knew. I did like the poet poems he wrote (i.e. the poems he wrote about Randall Jarrell). Overall, I believe Notebook 1967-68 is more for hardcore Lowell fans. What kept me invested in this collection was the few moments of poetry that I found. Robert Lowell’s LIFE STUDIES and FOR THE UNION DEAD will always be the works of his that I will recommend.
July 30, 2012
considered one of the pioneers of confessional poetry, it's a little bit dry and classical for my taste, but he's a necessary and important study. smart, smart guy.
beautiful writing if not a bit too noun-heavy.
beautiful writing if not a bit too noun-heavy.
February 4, 2015
As the title “Notebook” suggests, these poems fluctuate between brilliant to uninspired, though as is typical with Lowell, almost always challenging. The later, revised versions that appear in History and For Lizzie and Harriet are by far superior and in the former case, essential.
August 29, 2023
Reading Notebook 1967-1968 by Robert Lowell was a long, slow slog.
Lowell calls his work a “Verse journal,” designed as a single poem. If he intended, however, for there to be some sort of unity and cohesion, I was unable to apprehend it. There are some 280 sonnets, all in blank verse, some single, some in numbered sets. They are sonnets only in that they all have 14 lines. Few of the usual conventions of sonnets are adhered to. There is much content but very little to hold anything together. Lowell also uses the phrase “monotonous sublime” to refer to the Notebook. To me it was long on the monotonous and short on the sublime.
The content is interesting and varied. There are almost dedicatory references to a list of literary, historical, and artistic personalities including Mary McCarthy, Randall Jarrell, Charles Russell Lowell, Louis IX, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Sir Thomas Moore, Cato the Elder, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, Allen Tate, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Rembrandt, Sappho, Attila, Norman Mailer, Charles de Gaulle, Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Harpo Marx, John Berryman, and Che Guevara. (How would you like to be at a dinner party with that guest list?)
Notebook is also a chronicle of sorts touching on historical, political, and social events including, among others, the Vietnam War, the Arab-Israeli 6 Day War, urban riots in the summer of 1967, the Pentagon March, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s murder, and the 1968 uprising of French students and workers. There are also references to an assortment of works of art, and pieces of music.
There are numerous nature references from a broad range of places: Nantucket, Munich, Caracas, Waterloo, Harvard, Mexico, Canterbury, and New York,
Some of Lowell’s references seem to be lacking context; a few seem to lack clarity.
Reading this revived for me the long-standing debate about accessibility in poetry. On one hand there are Hallmark cards, nursery rhymes and doggerel. On the other hand, there are works that are full of linguistic gymnastics and verbal pyrotechnics. I sometimes refer to them as word salad and they often seem to be an attempt to show off intellectuality. I prefer that poetry touch me, enlighten me, teach me, make me laugh, and amuse me. But first, you’ve got to relate to me. No matter how well-crafted, literary, and erudite a poem is, if it doesn’t make sense, the poet’s effort was wasted on me. Most of the poems were rather abstract. Some were as dense as mahogany. Many of them left me saying, “huh?” This line is an example: “The wave of the wine glass trembled to see you walk.” Poetry? Or erudite b.s.?
Thank you for your patience with my rant. Just because I didn’t understand some of it, does not mean it’s not any good.
Lowell calls his work a “Verse journal,” designed as a single poem. If he intended, however, for there to be some sort of unity and cohesion, I was unable to apprehend it. There are some 280 sonnets, all in blank verse, some single, some in numbered sets. They are sonnets only in that they all have 14 lines. Few of the usual conventions of sonnets are adhered to. There is much content but very little to hold anything together. Lowell also uses the phrase “monotonous sublime” to refer to the Notebook. To me it was long on the monotonous and short on the sublime.
The content is interesting and varied. There are almost dedicatory references to a list of literary, historical, and artistic personalities including Mary McCarthy, Randall Jarrell, Charles Russell Lowell, Louis IX, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Sir Thomas Moore, Cato the Elder, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, Allen Tate, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Rembrandt, Sappho, Attila, Norman Mailer, Charles de Gaulle, Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Harpo Marx, John Berryman, and Che Guevara. (How would you like to be at a dinner party with that guest list?)
Notebook is also a chronicle of sorts touching on historical, political, and social events including, among others, the Vietnam War, the Arab-Israeli 6 Day War, urban riots in the summer of 1967, the Pentagon March, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s murder, and the 1968 uprising of French students and workers. There are also references to an assortment of works of art, and pieces of music.
There are numerous nature references from a broad range of places: Nantucket, Munich, Caracas, Waterloo, Harvard, Mexico, Canterbury, and New York,
Some of Lowell’s references seem to be lacking context; a few seem to lack clarity.
Reading this revived for me the long-standing debate about accessibility in poetry. On one hand there are Hallmark cards, nursery rhymes and doggerel. On the other hand, there are works that are full of linguistic gymnastics and verbal pyrotechnics. I sometimes refer to them as word salad and they often seem to be an attempt to show off intellectuality. I prefer that poetry touch me, enlighten me, teach me, make me laugh, and amuse me. But first, you’ve got to relate to me. No matter how well-crafted, literary, and erudite a poem is, if it doesn’t make sense, the poet’s effort was wasted on me. Most of the poems were rather abstract. Some were as dense as mahogany. Many of them left me saying, “huh?” This line is an example: “The wave of the wine glass trembled to see you walk.” Poetry? Or erudite b.s.?
Thank you for your patience with my rant. Just because I didn’t understand some of it, does not mean it’s not any good.
May 16, 2022
This was dense. There are little couplets and lines here that grabbed me, but overall it felt like a slog. It's meant to be one poem, it does feel like the poems are tied together with a theme of aging and dying, and the last poem is called "Obit". I liked the natural descriptions better than the historical/literary references but I can see again that Lowell is doing something here that is uniquely his own, and that his turn of phrase and ability to move and merge and grapple with unlikely combinations of images is something I haven't experienced before. Quite an interesting dip into someone else's headspace. But perhaps not worth the effort for most.
from "power"
"woman wants man, man woman, as naturally
as thirsty frog desires rain"
from "February and March"
Asleep just now, just as I am awake,...
friend, wife or child, their vanished art of breathing:
knowing I must forget now how to breathe through my mouth,
now I am dead, and just now I was made."
from "Ice on the Hudson":
"In the days of the freeze, we see a minor sun,
our winter moon bled for the solar rose"
from "Long Summer":
"We hunger for the ancient fruit
marriage with its naked artifice;
two practiced animal, closer to widower
and widow, greedily bending forward
for the first handgrasp fo vermilion leaves
clinging like blood clots to the smitten branch--
summer afield and whirling to the tropics,
to the dogdays and dustbowls-- men, like ears of corn,
fibrous growths...green, sweet, golden, black.
from "power"
"woman wants man, man woman, as naturally
as thirsty frog desires rain"
from "February and March"
Asleep just now, just as I am awake,...
friend, wife or child, their vanished art of breathing:
knowing I must forget now how to breathe through my mouth,
now I am dead, and just now I was made."
from "Ice on the Hudson":
"In the days of the freeze, we see a minor sun,
our winter moon bled for the solar rose"
from "Long Summer":
"We hunger for the ancient fruit
marriage with its naked artifice;
two practiced animal, closer to widower
and widow, greedily bending forward
for the first handgrasp fo vermilion leaves
clinging like blood clots to the smitten branch--
summer afield and whirling to the tropics,
to the dogdays and dustbowls-- men, like ears of corn,
fibrous growths...green, sweet, golden, black.
July 10, 2018
This was a mixed bag. Had the feeling of an extended writing jag where quality control was secondary to the ambition of writing 150+ pages of blank verse sonnets. But there are some gems here for sure. The Charles River, Harvard, and Mexico series, for example.
January 18, 2024
challenging book of poems committed to "unreality" as Lowell would call it. wonderful winter reading. really helps me recede into the New England of my mind. can see myself reclined on some harbourish beach right now
November 11, 2020
Frustrating. Unnerving. Violently inspirational.
February 4, 2025
It's fine but these are re-worked into better poems in History, Lowell's next book.
February 18, 2009
Meant to act as a single poem, Notebook is a series of blank verse sonnets that are by turns humorous, intellectual, and clever. Often all three at the same time.
I was less fond of his poems addressing named individuals and found myself particularly drawn to his more lyric poems, where I thought the imagery was much stronger and the voice less pedantic.
from DAWN:
...
In this ever more enlightened room,
I wake beside the early rising sun,
sex indelible on the flowering air--
shouldn't I pray for us to hold forever,
body of dolphin, breast of cloud?
You rival the renewal of all seasons,
clearing the puddles with your last-year books.
I was less fond of his poems addressing named individuals and found myself particularly drawn to his more lyric poems, where I thought the imagery was much stronger and the voice less pedantic.
from DAWN:
...
In this ever more enlightened room,
I wake beside the early rising sun,
sex indelible on the flowering air--
shouldn't I pray for us to hold forever,
body of dolphin, breast of cloud?
You rival the renewal of all seasons,
clearing the puddles with your last-year books.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews