Memoirs
by
49/99
Critics' Rating Index
41/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
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A complete collection of Robert Lowell's autobiographical prose, from unpublished writings about his youth to reflections on the triumphs and confusions of his adult life.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the manuscript of Lowell's lyrical evocation of his childhood, which was written in the 1950s and has remained unpublished until now.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
"The best approach to My Autobiography, The Balanced Aquarium and the other pieces here is perhaps to view them as dry runs for something far greater and enduring yet to come."
"Robert Lowell's wisdom, his close observation, is as vital now as it was in his lifetime."
"It deserves a wider audience."
"A new miscellany that includes depictions of his mental illness, reminiscences of peers including Anne Sexton, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Sylvia Plath, Allen Tate and Hannah Arendt, and other twigs and seeds, many seeing print for the first time ..."
"Writing was a life raft."
"Lowell's memories are at once vivid and listless."
"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 ..."
"Lowell's rich language and startling perceptiveness are nothing short of captivating."
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