Robert Lowell was
born March 1, 1917, in Boston, a member of a patrician New
England family, with James Russell Lowell for great-great-uncle
and Amy Lowell for distant cousin. He spent his early years in
Boston except for several periods in Washington and
Philadelphia, where his father, a naval officer, was stationed.
He attended St. Mark's School and came to know the Poet Richard
Eberhart, who was teaching there. Then, or soon after, Lowell
began to prepare himself with uncanny deliberateness for the
life of a poet. He enrolled at Harvard and immersed himself in
courses in courses in English literature; but after two years he
abruptly transferred to Kenyon College so he could study with
John Crowe Ransom. Under Ransom's guidance he studied the
classics, logic, and philosophy. After graduation in 1940,
Lowell attended Louisiana State University, where he studied
with Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks. At the same time he
formed a close friendship with Allen Tate, so that he was
immersed in the school of New Criticism and in their
predilection for "formal, difficult poems."
In 1940, the year
he was graduated from Kenyon College, Lowell married the
novelist Jean Stafford. (They were divorced in 1948.) He also
was converted to Catholicism. Lowell was greatly disturbed by
the advent of the Second World War. At first he tried,
unsuccessfully, to enlist. Then in 1943, as his apocalyptic view
sharpened, he grew horrified, particularly by the bombing of
civilians, and declared himself a conscientious objector. He was
given a year's jail sentence but was released after six months,
and afterwards lived for a time in Black Rock, near Bridgeport,
Connecticut.
Lowell has
confronted recent events with courage and conviction. He has
been at the center of things, especially in opposition to the
Vietnam War, both through poems and by public action. In
temporary withdrawal from the political scene, he lived in
England from 1970 to 1974. He now teaches creative writing at
Harvard.
__________
Ellmann,
Richard and Robert O'Clair. Modern Poems: An Introduction
to Poetry.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1973, p. 340.
