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Loading... Life Studies and For the Union Dead (FSG Classics) (edition 2007)by Robert Lowell
Work InformationLife Studies & For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I have two problems reading poetry: first, 'Selected Poems' are always too long, but also rarely representative; second, 'Collected Poems' are always way too long; third, individual books of poetry always contain more crap than gem. This confirms my hard-won insights. Lowell's best poems are really, really great- in this book I recommend Beyond the Alps, During Fever, Man and Wife, Skunk Hour; Middle Age, Those Before Us, Eye and Tooth, Law, The Drinker, Jonathan Edwards, Caligula, For the Union Dead. I'll be re-reading them. If I ever have to read another poem about some poet's holiday to South America, on the other hand... Plugged away at this off and on over a few weeks, reading it on coffee breaks at Starbucks, lunch hour in Frist, buses. Not with my comfort reading at home in the bath. Finally finished it today while waiting for a bus at the mall.Interesting. Bits of masculine emotion and childhood I had difficulty relating to, bits of history I liked, faintly religious musings I was fascinated by, and at the very end some moments from a breakdown, and after, that justified the entire boof to me and made me understand why Alvarez considered it such an important book.The style.. I'll have to read it again just to absorb the nuances... rhymes so subtle I missed them on first reading, rhythm faint, never jarring.But much of it didn't grip me, quite. This was a difficult read for me to get through--there were a few poems here and there that stood out as ones I'd want to come back to, but most of them were interesting enough as I pass them...but they didn't stop me in any way. The poems in these volumes that you've heard of, you've heard of for a reason...but the others fade into the background much too easily. no reviews | add a review
Contains
Robert Lowell, with Elizabeth Bishop, stands apart as the greatest American poet of the latter half of the twentieth century--andLife Studies and For the Union Deadstand as among his most important volumes. InLife Studies, which was first published in 1959, Lowell moved away from the formality of his earlier poems and started writing in a more confessional vein. The title poem ofFor the Union Deadconcerns the death of the Civil War hero (and Lowell ancestor) Robert Gould Shaw, but it also largely centers on the contrast between Boston's idealistic past and its debased present at the time of its writing, in the early 1960's. Throughout, Lowell addresses contemporaneous subjects in a voice and style that themselves push beyond the accepted forms and constraints of the time. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)818.5209Literature English (North America) Authors, American and American miscellany 20th Century 1900-1945 BiographyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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3.75 because I'm feeling #pretentious. ( )