Considered by many to be the most important poet in English of the second half of the twentieth century, Robert Lowell studied at Kenyon College under John Crowe Ransom and received an undergraduate degree in 1940. He published over fifteen books of poetry in his lifetime and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 at the age of thirty.
Kenyon Review Classics
Summer 1998
The First Sunday in Lent
From THE KENYON REVIEW, AUTUMN 1946 1. IN THE ATTIC The crooked family chestnut sighs, for March, Time’s fool, is storming up and down the town; The gray snow squelches and […]
Five Poems for John Crowe Ransom
Winter 1964
Those Before Us
They are all outline, uniformly gray, unregenerate arrowheads sloughed up the path here, or in the corners of the eye, they play their thankless, routed roles. They never were. Wormwood […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Summer 1998
At a Bible House
At a Bible HouseWhere smoking is forbidden By the Prophet’s Law, I saw you wiry, bed-ridden, Gone in the kidneys: raw Onions and a louse Twitched on the sheet before […]
Five Poems for John Crowe Ransom
Winter 1964
The Lesson
No longer to lie reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles, while the high mysterious squirrels rain small green branches on our sleep! All that landscape, one likes to think it died […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Summer 1998
Mary Winslow
Her Irish maids could never spoon out mush Or orange-juice enough; the body cools And smiles as a sick child Who adds up figures, and a hush Grips at the […]
Five Poems for John Crowe Ransom
Winter 1964
The Neo-Classical Urn
I rub my head and find a turtle shell, stuck on a pole, each hair electrical with charges, and the juice alive with ferment. Bubbles drive the motor, always purposeful […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Summer 1998
Mr. Edwards and the Spider
I saw the spiders marching through the air, Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day In latter August when the hay Came creaking to the barn. But where The […]
Five Poems for John Crowe Ransom
Winter 1964
Night Sweat
Work-table, litter, books and standing lamp, plain things, my stalled equipment, the old broom— but I am lying in a tidied room, for ten nights now I've felt the creeping […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Summer 1998
Winter in Dunbarton
Time smiling on this sundial of a world Corrupted the snow-monster and the worm, Ransacker of shard statues and the peers Of Europe; but our cat is cold, is curled […]
Five Poems for John Crowe Ransom
Winter 1964
Dropping South: Brazil
Walking and walking in a mothy robe, one finger pushing through the pocket-hole, I crossed the reading room and met my soul, hunched, spinning downward on the colored globe. The […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Summer 1998
Satan’s Confession
I. The Garden “My laurels are cut down,”The Son of Morning mourns; ”Old Adam’s funeral wreath, Once crossed with death,Is Jesus’ crown,The Scapegoat’s Crown of thorns. There is an idle-richImage of the […]
Poetry
Autumn 1962
The Tenth Muse
Tenth Muse, Oh my heartfelt Sloth, how often now you come to my bed, thin as a canvas in your white and red check dresses like a tablecloth, my Dearest, […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Summer 1998
The Dandelion Girls
From THE KENYON REVIEW, WINTER 1939 As home-made candles with fuzzy wicksBent birches sprout out of a knobWhere brilliant clouds have surged away —Clouds are luxuriantly grey. Slackly curling below […]
Poetry
Autumn 1962
The Scream (Derived from Elizabeth Bishop’s Story, “In the Village”)
A scream, the echo of a scream, now only a thinning echo . . . As a child in Nova Scotia, I used to watch the sky, Swiss sky, too […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Summer 1998
The Cities’ Summer Death
The summer hospital enframes In its fashionable windows Boats brow-beaten by varnished storms And curbed-off grass where no cows browse. Grandfather feathery as thought Furls his flurried wrapper and floats […]
Poetry
Summer 1943
Satan’s Confession
I. The Garden “My laurels are cut down,”The Son of Morning mourns; ”Old Adam’s funeral wreath, Once crossed with death,Is Jesus’ crown,The Scapegoat’s Crown of thorns. There is an idle-richImage […]
Poetry
Autumn 1961
Two Translations from Giacomo Leopardi
A few paragraphs in Matthew Arnold’s Lord Byron essay are the most commanding and intuitive criticism of Leopardi in English. We have nothing else perhaps of sufficient force and lightness; […]
Poetry
Winter 1939
The Dandelion Girls
As home-made candles with fuzzy wicksBent birches sprout out of a knobWhere brilliant clouds have surged away —Clouds are luxuriantly grey. Slackly curling below this knobA stagnant brook is stiff […]
Book Reviews
Spring 1955
The Muses Won’t Help Twice
The Metamorphoses Of Ovid. An English version by A. E. Watts. University of California Press. $5.00. A. E. Watts’s translation of the Metamorphoses into five-foot couplets is admirable, steady, civilized—and […]
Poetry
Winter 1939
The Cities’ Summer Death
The summer hospital enframesIn its fashionable windowsBoats brow-beaten by varnished stormsAnd curbed-off grass where no cows browse. Grandfather feathery as thoughtFurls his flurried wrapper and floatsOff his adjustable bedWafted on […]
Book Reviews
Autumn 1953
Prose Genius in Verse
Brother To Dragons by Robert Penn Warren. Random House. $3.50. In spite of its Plutarchan decor, Brother to Dragons is a brutal, perverse melodrama that makes the flesh crawl. On […]
Poetry
Summer 1953
Beyond the Alps (On the Train from Rome to Paris)
(On the train from Rome to Paris) Reading of how the Swiss have thrown the sponge In once again and Everest is still Unscaled, I watch our Paris pullman lunge […]
Poetry
Winter 1951
The Mills of the Kavanaughs
(An afternoon in the fall of 1943; a village a little north of Bath, Maine. Anne Kavanaugh is sitting in her garden playing solitaire. She pretends that the Bible she […]
Poetry
Summer 1948
Mother Marie Therese
(She was drowned in 1912. The speaker is a Canadian nun stationed in New Brunswick.) Old sisters at our Maris Stella House Remember how the Mother's strangled grouse And snow-shoe […]
Poetry
Winter 1948
Falling Asleep over the Aeneid
An old man in Concord forgets to go to Morning Service. He falls asleep, while reading Virgil, and dreams that he is Aeneas at the funeral of Pallas, an Italian […]
Poetry
Autumn 1946
The First Sunday in Lent
I. IN THE ATTIC The crooked family chestnut sighs, for March, Time’s fool, is storming up and down the town; The gray snow squelches and the well-born stamp From sermons […]
Poetry
Autumn 1946
At a Bible House
At a Bible HouseWhere smoking is forbidden By the Prophet’s Law, I saw you wiry, bed-ridden, Gone in the kidneys: raw Onions and a louse Twitched on the sheet before […]
Poetry
Autumn 1946
Mary Winslow
Her Irish maids could never spoon out mush Or orange-juice enough; the body cools And smiles as a sick child Who adds up figures, and a hush Grips at the […]
Poetry
Winter 1946
Mr. Edwards and the Spider
I saw the spiders marching through the air, Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day In latter August when the hay Came creaking to the barn. But where […]
Poetry
Winter 1946
Winter in Dunbarton
Time smiling on this sundial of a world Corrupted the snow-monster and the worm, Ransacker of shard statues and the peers Of Europe; but our cat is cold, is curled […]
The Hopkins Centennial (Concluded)
Autumn 1944
The Hopkins Centennial: A Note
[We published in the Summer issue four papers about General Manley Hopkins, on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of the poet’s birth. The tribute is concluded with the three […]
Poetry
Autumn 1961
The Infinite
From the Italian. That hill pushed off by itself was always dear to me and the hedges near it that cut away so much of the final horizon. When I […]
Poetry
Autumn 1961
Saturday Night in the Village
From the Italian. The day is ready to close; the girl takes the downward path homeward from the vineyard, and jumps from crevice to crevice like a goat, as […]