Montclair State University Poems of Robert Lowell Discussion Paper

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Read and annotate "Robert Lowell 101" by Benjamin Voigt (Links to an external site.) on the Poetry Foundation website, along with all of the Lowell poems that are linked in the article.

Write a short Discussion Post in which you define the following terms from Voigt's essay and provide examples from Lowell's poetry. Don't just quote Voigt's use of the term - look at the poem he is referring to, and provide your own quotation from the poem. Use a dictionary and/or Wikipedia (or other encyclopedia) to help you define the terms.

Prosody

Allusion

Sensibility

Meter/Metrical

Confessional poetry

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“The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket" Published in 1946, this poem from Lord Weary's Castle exemplifies the extravagance of Lowell's early work. This elegy for Lowell's sailor cousin features not only rich imagery and an elaborate rhyme scheme but is also packed with allusions to biblical tales, Greek myths, English poetry, and New England lore. Key among these reference points is Melville's Moby-Dick, from which Lowell borrows characters, an outlook, even its inflamed, encyclopedic sensibility. The sea isn't just the sea: it's a place where the heel-headed dogfish barks its nose / On Ahab's void and forehead." Lowell would later declaim his dense iambs as “ponderous armor,” but his more direct later work retains the grand ambition on display here. a “Sailing Home from Rapallo" Like many in Life Studies, this poem from its final section focuses on difficult personal material—in this case, the complexity of the grief Lowell feels when his mother passes away. We see hints of the class resentments and marital troubles that marked his adolescent home life. But a big part of the poem's power comes from Lowell's turn toward a rawer prosody. His meter here is freer and his line more varied, and rigid schema are discarded in favor of a more flexible music. Compare the open emotionality, for instance, of the direct rhyme in the opening lines (week/cheeks) to the brute irony of the slant one in the closing lines (LOVEL/tinfoil). These subtler effects help bring readers into the poet's state of mind rather than merely underscore his virtuosity “Memories of West Street and Lepke” During World War II, Lowell was imprisoned for a year for refusing to serve in the armed services. In this lyric, the poet looks back on that decision with skepticism. “Ought I to regret my seedtime?” Lowell asks, labeling his pacifism a “manic statement.” He means this literally: Lowell was bipolar and suffered from manic episodes throughout his adult life. These episodes often left him regretful and embarrassed, but the poem offers few alternatives to such “agonizing reappraisal.” His present (where he is “book-worming / in pajamas”) may seem stable, even cozy, but there are suggestions that the domesticity of Eisenhower-era America is repressive, “tranquilized.” Even grimmer is Lowell's muse here, the figure we end on: "Czar Lepke,” the Jewish mob boss who was jailed in a nearby cell. Lepke may possess the certainty and "calm” Lowell longs for but is also “lobotomized” and headed for execution. a > “Skunk Hour" For a landmark of confessional poetry, the last poem in Life Studies is surprisingly circumspect. Aside from the voyeurism and self-flagellation at its center, the poem focuses outward. As in the work of Elizabeth Bishop- Lowell's friend and the poem's dedicatee—much of the thinking here unfolds in images of setting. The last—of a “mother skunk" with “her wedge-head in a cup / of sour cream”—is not only one of the poem's most mysterious but also its most important. For Lowell, the skunk is a figure of both ugliness and fearlessness. Like the autobiographical poet, she relies on the “sour” and uncouth but is unashamed of doing so and “will not scare” from her scavenging. This openness stands in sharp contrast to the "hierarchic privacy” “ of the “hermit / heiress,” the other mother-figure who begins the poem and speaks to Lowell's Brahmin heritage. > > “For the Union Dead” Even though he embraced the possibilities of free verse, Lowell never completely left behind his formalist training. Consider, for example, this poem from his 1964 book by the same name, his much-anticipated follow-up to Life Studies. Though its lines are unrhymed, varied in length, and only loosely metered, they're still organized into closed quatrains. The tension between this traditional container and its more modern contents mirrors the poem's subject: the collision of old Boston and a new post-war America. In an era of atomic anxiety and civil upheaval, Lowell laments the “sparse, sincere rebellion” of abolitionist New England, and the consistent stanza here serves as a formal analogue of that idealized past, a “compass” that guides us through the poem's disorienting, dream-like present. > “Randall Jarrell” For a period beginning in the late 1960s, Lowell wrote exclusively in blank verse sonnets, relying on the form to give looser, more impressionistic work a metrical and argumentative backbone. Many of these poems are portraits of historical figures or “old friends.” This 1969 elegy focuses on someone who was both the poet and critic Randall Jarrell, whom Lowell had known since : college. Jarrell had died a few years prior in a likely suicide, but he appears in a vision after this sonnet's volta, cradling his “gnawed wrist” like his beloved Persian “Kitten.” The questions he asks Lowell echo those in Jarrell's poem “The Happy Cat,” a resemblance that underscores just how directly Lowell's work drew on his personal and poetic relationships. >
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Poetry

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Poetry
Prosody
Prosody refers to speech intonation, stress, and rhythm that help provide a deeper
meaning of information than literal words. For example, in the poem 'I’m an Avid Skier’ by Jill
Magi (2019), the persona changes the tone while reciting the statement ‘when I was young, I’ve
enjoyed helping mom… As I grew old… I desired to help others as well’ The prosody here
signifies that the speaker is compassionate, caring, loving, and mindful. The emotional and cool
tone speaks louder than words can express the desire.
Allusion
An allusion is an indirect reference to something or someone. That is, referring to
something without necessarily mentioning its real name. In the poem 'I, Too,' Langston Hughes
(2019) says, 'I am the darker brother. they send me to eat in the kitchen.’ ‘Darker brother’
means ‘different from others’ and ‘to eat in the kitchen’ means 'to discriminate.'
Sensibility
It is the ability to appreciate artistic works and respond to emotions. They enable the
poetic to choose the correct words that best describe feelings and tone. The title itself is
sensibility in the poem ‘As serious as a heart attack’ by Kalamu Ya Salaam (2020). 'Seriousness'
has been symbolically compared with ‘...

Yrova (10128)
University of Virginia

Anonymous
This is great! Exactly what I wanted.

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