Robert Lowell

1
Robert Lowell
Born in Boston 1917 in Boston Attended Harvard
College for two years Transferred Kenyon College
and Graduated in 1940 Died in 1977 in New York
2
Early Successes
His first book was entitled, Land of The
Unlikeness.
Lord Wearys Castle was his second book. For
this he received a Pulitzer Prize in 1946.
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Man and Wife

• Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother's bed the
  rising sun in war paint dyes us red in broad
  daylight her gilded bed-posts shine, abandoned,
  almost Dionysian. At last the trees are green on
  Marlborough Street, blossoms on our magnolia
  ignite the morning with their murderous five
  days' white. All night I've held your hand, as if
  you had a fourth time faced the kingdom of the
  mad-- its hackneyed speech, its homicidal eye--
  and dragged me home alive. . . .Oh my Petite,
  clearest of all God's creatures, still all air
  and nerve you were in our twenties, and I, once
  hand on glass and heart in mouth, outdrank the
  Rahvs in the heat of Greenwich Village, fainting
  at your feet-- too boiled and shy and poker-faced
  to make a pass, while the shrill verve of your
  invective scorched the traditional South. Now
  twelve years later, you turn your back.
  Sleepless, you hold your pillow to your hollows
  like a child your old-fashioned tirade-- loving,
  rapid, merciless-- breaks like the Atlantic Ocean
  on my head.

Man and Wife is one of my favorite poems that I
have read from Robert Lowell. I believe the
meaning of this poem is just him loving his wife.
It talks about her getting older and all the
things that go through your head when you look at
the girl you love. I think Robert Lowell did a
good job describing his feelings in this poem.
4
Family and School

• His father, Robert Traill Spence Lowell, was an
  officer in the United States Navy. Lowell's
  mother, Charlotte Winslow Lowell, descended from
  an old New England family. Lowell went to private
  schools in Boston and went to St. Marks for two
  years. Robert always knew he wanted to be a poet
  but when he went to St. Marks he seemed to have
  wanted it more. He went to Harvard for two years
  but then dropped out. From there he went to
  Kenyon College in Ohio to study under John Crowe
  Ransom.

5
Other Interesting Facts

• During the second World War, Robert Lowell had
  volunteered to go into action. But his poor
  eyesight led to his rejection. However, when he
  heard of the United States involvement in bombing
  a civilians in Germany, he quickly changed his
  opinions of the war. He spent several months in
  jail for his opposition of the war.
• He also had many depressive panic attacks and
  after his mothers death in 1954 he was committed
  to McLean Mental hospital.

6
Contributions to Literature

• Robert Lowell In my opinion, wrote what he felt
  in the heart. He seemed to have wrote poems when
  going through difficult stages in his life. Like
  when he was in jail or in the mental hospital. He
  even said he wanted to write more directly from
  personal experience. The result was one of
  Americas greatest poets.

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Poetry

•     Land of Unlikeness (1944)     Lord Weary's
  Castle (1946)     Poems, 1938-1949 (1950)
      The Mills of the Kavanaughs (1951)     Life
  Studies (1959)     Imitations (1961)     For
  the Union Dead (1964)     Selected Poems (1965)
      Near the Ocean (1967)     The Voyage and
  Other Versions of Poems by Baudelaire (1968)
      Notebooks, 1967-1968 (1969)     History
  (1973)     For Lizzy and Harriet (1973)     The
  Dolphin (1973)     Selected Poems (1976)
      Day by Day (1977)

8
Awards

• Lord Wearys Castle- Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in
  1947

9
Works Cited

• http//www.poets.org

www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lowell/lowell.
htm
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The End