149. (Robert Lowell)

“Self-accusation,” writes Geoffrey Hill, “is the life-blood of Romanticism.” For a long time, I thought Lowell a late-Romantic, working back, … More

99. (William Empson)

Whatever else its relationship to genre, wit is a particular way of coping with the world’s fragility, its tendency to … More

She shares with Eugenio Montale a novel sense of what epiphany a poem can or should seek or record. She only … More

My mind is snared by wit, and Marvell’s wit in particular. The Greatness of that poet, once proclaimed, has burned … More

Here is another attempt at the Lowell muddle, since the last was either abstruse or wrong. Lowell’s poetry can profitably … More

The disservice of the term “Confessional Poetry,” coined by M.L. Rosenthal in 1957 to describe not only Robert Lowell’s poetry, … More

Robert Lowell’s 1961 Imitations did more for the reputation of twentieth-century poets Mandelstam and Montale than it did for the … More