Now that we've spent a lot of time with a single poem, I'd like to discuss Lowell more generally in our next section. We can talk about issues raised by
Life Studies as a whole and Lowell's position as a poet in 1950s America.
Please continue to post if you haven't already done so for last week. (Or you can post again, if so inclined.)
"I would squirm. I dared not look up because I knew that the Commander abhorred Mother's dominion over my father, thought my asthma, supposedly brought on my the miasmal damp of Washington, a myth, and considered our final flight to Boston a scandal" (51, "91 Revere Street").
ReplyDeleteI am interested in a number of themes suggested in this passage, the most overt being Lowell's father's emasculation by his wife. This theme appears throughout the story, also echoed by Bob Senior's relationship with his naval commander. I also want to explore the discomfort that the language and imagery creates for both Lowell and the reader.
Marlena Gittleman
Monday 4-5
I'm glad we are close reading because Lowell manages to be incredibly dense while using language that seems somehow minimal, or even simple. The most interesting and inaccessible poem for me is "Waking in the Blue."I'd like to talk about the last stanza/couple lines (We are all old-timers,/ each of us holds a locked razor.), and attempt to unpack them together in class.
ReplyDeleteIn a lot of ways this poem reminds me of an O'Hara poem, but there's something much darker in Lowell. He's very upfront in talking about mental illness, in a way that's very different from how the Beats did it.
Corey Fernandez, M 4-450.
"I was less rather than more bookish than most children, but the girl I dreamed about continually had wheel-spoke black and gold eyelashes, double-length page-boy blond hair, a little apron, a bold, blunt face, a saucy, shivery way of talking, and... a paper body--she was the girl in John Tenniel's illustration to Alice in Wonderland."
ReplyDeleteI think this is such an interesting passage because the idea of Alice as an ideal for a young boy is interesting in context of her character from the book. The implications of this kind of crush reveal a lot about Lowell's young character, and I think it would be interesting to discuss what kinds of things this brings up.
Stacy (M 11-11:50)
From "Home After Three Months Away"
ReplyDelete"Recuperating, I neither spin nor toil.
Three stories down below,
a choreman tends our coffin's length of soil,
and seven horizontal tulips blow."
Just like Corey mentioned in "Waking up in Blue," this poem reveals a very upfront attitude by Lowell towards mental illness and recuperation. I would like to discuss Lowell's imagery of "our coffin" and what he is trying to say about death specifically by using that image.
-Molly (M 4-4:50)
"To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage" is a poem that stuck out to me because it is prefaced with a quote by Schopenhauer. It's interesting because while the quote seems somewhat positive, it is juxtaposed with the poem that follows, which is about the misery one may face in a marriage.
ReplyDeleteMichelle (M 11-11:50)
Lowell uses the body and its adornment (clothing etc.) as weighty signifiers. I am curious as to the ways in which such corporeal descriptions accent/contribute to the poem's meanings. In "Walking in the Blue," he writes, "These Victorious figures of bravado ossified young./ In between the limits of day, hours and hours go by under the crew haircuts/," and later, "After a hearty New England breakfast,/ I weight nearly two hundred pounds/ this morning. Cock of the walk,/ I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor's jersey/ before the metal shaving mirrors,/ and see the shaky future grow familiar/ in the pinched, indigenous faces/ of these thoroughbred mental cases,/." Beyond signifying temporal shifts, what role does the body play?
ReplyDeleteIn "Terminal days at Beverly Farms," which ends with Lowell's father dying, he offers an unusually regal description of his father's physicality: "He smiled his oval Lowell smile,/ he worse his cream gabardine dinner-jacket,/and indigo cummerbund./His head was efficient and hairless,/his newly dieted figure vitally trim." This description shares many similarities with the description of Uncle Devereaux before his death. How might we read into this?
-oriane 4-450
was completely taken by the third verse paragraph in the Dunbarton poem. "He was my father. I was his son..." It's about the relationship between the two of them. I loved the sense of liberation--the letting loose in the family graveyard. It was so satisfying to witness this scene of a father--so shut-off in so many ways--essentially being a kid.
ReplyDeleteThe thrill and carefree attitude expressed in this paragraph reminds me of the lost children types in On The Road and I think draws an interesting line of connection between the development of wreckless behavior in adulthood and the sense of freedom (of lack thereof) felt in childhood.
Dale
4-4:50
I think I'd like to talk a little about Lowell in relation to the other poets at the time. While he certainly ushered in a new era of poetry, he is not someone as radical as the Beats, for instance. The topics and themes found in Lowell are found in other schools of poetry at the time too, but I'd like to discuss how its different for him to take on those topics.
ReplyDeleteBeyond the Alps:
ReplyDelete"When the Vatican made Mary's Assumption dogma, the crowds at San Pietro scremed Papa..the lights of science couldn't hold a candle to mary rise". I'm interested in this poem as a whole and how, as the first poem of the book, it sets up some of the major themes of the book. The tension between the religious and the pagan, the father and his children, modernity and classicism...Lowell's literal journey through the mountain seems to mirror some of his emotional transitions in the work.
-Devorah Toren, 11-11:50