Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IVwas an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the Mayflower. His family, past and present, were important subjects in his poetry. Growing up in Boston also informed his poems, which were frequently set in Boston and the New England region. The literary scholar Paula Hayes believes that Lowell mythologized New England, particularly in his early work...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth1 March 1917
CountryUnited States of America
Pity the planet, all joy gone from this sweet volcanic cone; peace to our children when they fall in small war on the heel of small war--until the end of time to police the earth, a ghost orbiting forever lost in our monotonous sublime
It is night, And it is vanity, and age Blackens the heart of Adam. Fear, The yellow chirper, beaks its cage.
Everywhere, giant finned cars nose forward like fish; a savage servility slides by on grease.
Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme-- why are they no help to me now I want to make something imagined, not recalled?
We feel the machine slipping from our hands As if someone else were steering; If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming train.
The world is absolutely out of control now and is not going to be saved by any reason or unreason.
In the end, there is no end.
If youth is a defect, it is one we outgrow too soon.
Most poetry is very formal, but when a modern poet is formal he gets more attention for it than old poets did.
I was overcome with an attack of pathological enthusiasm.
Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what a vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction.
I'm sure that writing isn't a craft, that is, something for which you learn the skills and go on turning out. It must come from some deep impulse, deep inspiration. That can't be taught, it can't be what you use in teaching.
Poetry is not the record of an event: it is an event.