Life Studies

Infobox Book
name = Life Studies
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author = Robert Lowell
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language = English
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genre = Poetry
publisher = Farrar, Straus & Giroux
release_date = 1959
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preceded_by = The Mills of The Kavanaughs
followed_by = Imitations

"Life Studies" is the fourth book of poems by Robert Lowell. Many critics consider it Lowell's most important bookFact|date=March 2008 and the Academy of American Poets named it one of their "Groundbreaking Books." [http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5960]

Composition

Some of the poems were written after Lowell's stay in the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Boston in early 1958. The manuscript was competed in the summer of 1958, and sent to Farrar, Straus & Cudahy in October.

Publication

"Life Studies" was first published in London by Faber & Faber. This was to allow for it to be entered for selection by the Poetry Book Society, one condition being that the first edition must be British. Because of the rush to release the book in Britain, the British first edition does not include the "91 Revere Street" section. The first American edition was published in 1959 by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York, and won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1960. Lowell's previous books were "Land of Unlikeness", "Lord Weary's Castle", and "The Mills of The Kavanaughs".

tructure

The book is in four parts. Part One contains four poems:

*Beyond the Alps
*The Banker's Daughter
*Inauguration Day: January 1953
*A Mad Negro Soldier Confined at Munich

Part Two is a long prose passage entitled "91 Revere Street"

Part Three contains four poems:

*Ford Madox Ford
*For George Santayana
*To Delmore Schwartz
*Words for Hart Crane

Part Four is titled "Life Studies" and comprises:
* I
** My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow
** Dunbarton
** Grandparents
** Commander Lowell
** Terminal Days at Beverly Farms
** Father's Bedroom
** For Sale
** Sailing Home from Rapallo
** During Fever
** Waking in the Blue
** Home After Three Months Away
* II
** Memories of West Street and Lepke
** Man and Wife
** "To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage"
** Skunk Hour

Critical Response

M. L. Rosenthal wrote a review, entitled 'Poetry as Confession' which first applied the term 'confession' to Lowell's approach, and led to the name of the school of Confessional poetry.

John Thompson in "The Kenyon Review" spotted a key aspect of the book's significance: "For these poems, the question of propriety no longer exists. They have made a conquest: what they have won is a major expansion of the territory of poetry." [Thompson, John, "Two Poets",Kenyon Review 21 (1959) pages 482 – 490.]

Historical significance

"Life Studies" is commonly seen as the first confessional book of poetry, although Kirsch questions the validity of this view. [Kirsch (2005)]

References

* Kirsch, Adam: , W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.

Footnotes