According to Steven Axelrod, Lowell's work "centered around his
quest for the craft and inspiration to bring even more experience
into his art, and his related quest to account for the place art
makes in experience." Fair enough. Upon these related sawhorses
Axelrod rests his book: chapter by chapter, half biography, half
exegesis. Lowell's "Emersonian esthetic" - the individual in the
world - and his freely admitted influences are well covered, along
with a good many of the sometimes confusing political expeditions
that the poet was forever making. But what's ultimately striking is
how relatively neutral and unexcited Axelrod stays, vis-a-vis his
subject. He does lavish attention on books like Near the Ocean that
have been critically downplayed by others, but how he feels about
Lowell's art, judgmentally, we're never quite sure. Standard
academic references to Sartre, Camus, and Buber's I-Thou theory
seem like buffers against definite opinion; rarely does Axelrod
work up an intellectual sweat. Lowell tried very hard - the least
his critics and explicators might do is approach that level of felt
labor. Students, however, will find the book prosaically useful.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Robert Lowell is one of the most widely recognised and influential
poets of the second half of this century. Yet his career is
problematical and raises many questions about direction and
quality, particularly in light of his repeated reorientation of
thematic concern and poetic technique. Many previous studies of the
poet have accounted for these radical differences in Lowell's work
by examining the poet's private life, but this collection of essays
attempts to reassess Lowell's poetry and to restimulate critical
thinking about it by focusing on his texts to raise new questions
and discussions about the work. The twelve essays in this volume,
by many of the most distinguished scholars in the field, offer a
chronological review of Robert Lowell's career as a poet. The book
includes pieces on major works such as Lord Weary's Castle, Life
Studies, For the Union Dead, 'Skunk Hour', Notebook, the sonnets of
1969-73 as well as four essays devoted to Lowell's last complete
and often neglected work, Day by Day. Employing a variety of
methodologies, the essays arrive at innovative and, often,
controversial interpretations of Lowell's poems.
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