And now, at long last, I venture to say something about Robert Lowell. To quote my friend David, "Ah, Mr. Lowell, I am no great fan generally, but sometimes . . . you were better than very fine." David's particular favorite is "For the Union Dead"; I lean toward others in that same collection, especially "The Old Flame." But frequently, when reading Lowell, I remain unmoved. So often he seems to interlace whining with self-conscious academic pomposity, a combination I find dull at best and repellant at worst. Still, he had a brilliant mind and a brave ear and an overflowing heart. So for this week's project, I decided to copy out some of the late, messy poems--the ones written after his break with Elizabeth Hardwick and then his yearning return to her. I thought it might be interesting to look at Lowell at his least controlled, even his most embarrassing. For indeed,  poetry is a messy business; and if nothing else, the confessional poets (however one might choose to define the term) are united in their need to wallow in emotional chaos.

And the late Lowell poems are touching in their distress. They are not always, not even often, very good poems. He seems to have shed his metrical ear and his intellectual precision, but the poems retain a sad, plaintive, indecisive vulnerability. They maunder on almost unintelligibly and then, as in "Shadow," suddenly reveal an aphoristic nakedness:

I have watched the shadow of the crow,

a Roman omen,

cross my shaking hand,

an enigma even for us to read,

a crowsfoot scribble--

when I was with my friend,

I never knew that I had hands.

A man without a wife

is like a turtle without a shell--

Ah, well. Poor Lowell. Poor Bolton. Poor Sexton and Plath. Possibly I should take up joy for next week's project. For the moment I will resign my critical duties and go mix up birthday-party cake.