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Robert Lowell
1917-1977
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| Robert Lowell is buried in the private
Stark Cemetery, Dunbarton, Merrimack County, New Hampshire, USA.
(See map...ref no. 9) Lowell spent many of his final years in England following his
marriage to the novelist Caroline Blackwood in 1973. (This was his 3rd marriage.)
He died suddenly of a heart attack on 12 September 1977 whilst
on his way to New York.
Lowell's collection Life Studies - published in 1959 -
changed the face of modern American poetry with its confessional style and its
departure from formal verse and metre forms.
Stark Cemetery
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 During World War II Lowell was jailed for six months for being a
conscientious objector - experiences which he later recorded in his poem Memories
of West Street and Lepke.
The Lowell family - one of the oldest and most prominent of
Boston families - had already produced two previous poets: James Russell Lowell
(1819-91) and the experimental poet Amy Lowell (1874-1925).
Lowell's final collection of verse Day by Day was
published in the year of his death.
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| One night you dreamed |
| you were a mermaid
clinging to a wharf-pile, |
| and trying to pull |
| off the barnacles with
your hands.
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| We wished our two
souls |
| might return like gulls |
| to the rock. In the end, |
| the water was too cold
for us. |
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From Water |
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Links:
Modern
American Poetry Click here to buy poetry by Robert Lowell |
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