Memoirs
by
49/99
Critics' Rating Index
41/99
Readers' Rating Index
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Scholars' Citation Index
84/99
Volume of Reviews
6/99
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About This Book
A complete collection of Robert Lowell's autobiographical prose, from unpublished writings about his youth to reflections on the triumphs and confusions of his adult life. Robert Lowell's Memoirs is an unprecedented literary discovery: the manuscript of Lowell's lyrical evocation of his childhood, which was written in the 1950s and has remained unpublished until now. Meticulously edited by Steven Gould Axelrod and Grzegorz Kosc, it serves as a precursor or companion to his groundbreaking book of poems Life Studies, which signaled a radically new prose-inflected direction in his work, and indeed in American poetry. Memoirs also includes intense depictions of Lowell's mental illness and his determined efforts to recover. It concludes with Lowell's reminiscences of other writers, among them T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Hannah Arendt, and Sylvia Plath. Memoirs demonstrates Lowell's expansive gifts as a prose stylist and his powers of introspection and observation. It provides striking new evidence of the range and brilliance of Lowell's achievement. Includes black-and-white photographs
Reviews
"These writings give us added glimpses into the life of a poet who made a new art form out of baring the soul, even while expertly keeping his words measured and precise ..."
"Lowell seems buoyant and chattier in these pieces, unburdened by the weight of being custodian of his family's secrets."
"In the book's final section are found eloquent portraits of his contemporaries ..."
"Through it he found a way to lower his poems' temperature and fix, in lasting images, what his biographer Ian Hamilton called 'the moderate emotions', fashioning memory into art."
"It makes for excellent reading, whatever your feelings (or lack of feelings) about the poet or the man ..."
"Lowell's rich language and startling perceptiveness are nothing short of captivating."
"Reading Memoirs is like finding a roll of undeveloped film from 1954."
"Highly detailed, lucid, and precise, Lowell's writing is witty, sarcastic, and revealing about himself, his parents, his beloved grandfather, and others in his orbit ..."
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