[lit-ideas] Taking Lowell personally

From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Lit-Ideas " <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 10:16:40 -0800
I have been reading Paul Mariani's Lost Puritan, A Life of Robert Lowell
[copyright 1994].  One thing that has puzzled me about most writers and
puzzles me about Lowell is the extent to which they abase themselves in
order to achieve the praises of people they don't really respect.  Lowell
would find someone whose writing he respected and attach himself like a
limpet to a shark.  He followed Tate when he went to Kenyon hoped to live at
his house but when Tate said there was no room unless he wanted to live on
his front lawn.  Lowell did just that, got a tent and lived on the lawn for
about 3 weeks.  Neighbors complained about seeing him urinating and
defecating on Tate's lawn.

While I was interested in poetry from an early age I was never interested in
becoming a "famous" poet.  The idea appalled me.  It would have utterly
disrupted my life; which I've managed to organize pretty much the way I've
wanted - except for Susan's illness of course - couldn't stop that.

Lowell considered himself an old man at 50 and was sure he hadn't long to
live.  True to his expectations he died at 60.  The photos of him as a young
man show him to be robust.  He was strong but not terribly well coordinated.
He believed he could do anything he set his mind to, which is probably
something all of us have believed.  In his case he was using his name as a
stepping stone and perhaps none of us had that "advantage," but would we
have done what he did if we did it?

My mother was like Lowell's, a forceful woman.  Her demands and expectations
drove my brother into hiding.  I only found him this past week living in
Centerville Utah, hiding amongst the Mormon's perhaps.  His first question
to me after I called him had to do with our mother.  Was she still alive?
How long had she been dead?  Maybe it was safe now to come out.  I more
famously (in our family) didn't get along with my mother because I would
argue with her.  Lowell argued with his as well.  His father who was under
his mother's thumb he once knocked down, but then he needed the financial
support of his parents.  I on the other hand didn't need that sort of thing;
so my mother had no power over me.  Why my brother allowed her power over
him is something I hope to find out some day.  

Lowell seems to have been star-struck by literary achievement.  His
infatuation for Jean Stafford is seen by Mariani as a very bad thing.
Stafford was perhaps even more unbalanced that Lowell.  Saying she would
marry him and not meaning it, then meaning it, then telling a former lover,
Hightower that he should leave his wife and take her away to China on a trip
he has scheduled; then finally marrying Lowell and not particularly liking
it.  Mariani writes on page 87 "Even with respect, with awe of a superior
mind and a shining talent,' there was still the claustrophobia.  Nor was
there anything very remarkable about sex, which one might observe 'in swine
and high-school girls.'" 

Jean Stafford won a Pulitzer Prize for her short stories.  Lowell's
subsequent wives were writers as well.  He was immersed in the writing-world
of his time.  He seems to have believed that poets were still Shelley's
legislators of the world.  I've read a number of Lowell's political opinions
and am not impressed - Mike might be, however.  In any case his arguments
were typically Left Wing for his time - nothing distinctive.

I wonder as I read whether there are other reflections of his madness than
the overt manic episodes that ended each time with his being committed to a
mental institution.  Living on Tate's lawn, as he did, strikes me as a bit
looney - as does his attachment to writers and critics who can further his
career - or maybe not.  Maybe that's what all successful writers do.  

Lawrence


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[lit-ideas] Taking Lowell personally

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