The Letters of Robert Lowell

Born in Boston, Robert Lowell, great-grandnephew of James Russell Lowell and distant cousin of Amy Lowell, was a brilliant and rebellious member of that distinguished family. He received his B.A. in 1940 from Kenyon College, where he had studied underJohn Crowe Ransom and came to know Allen Tate. In 1940, he also converted to Catholicism. During World War II, he tried twice to enlist, but by the time he was called, his strong feelings against the bombing of civilians had made him a conscientious objector. He was married for a time to Elizabeth Hardwick, editor of the N.Y. Review of Books. His subject matter includes New England and its traditions, colored in the early poems by an intellectualized religious symbolism and a savage satire against the materialism of modern American life.

Lowell won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for "Lord Weary's Castle" (1946), in which religion was beginning to fade as a source of his symbolism. In "Life Studies," which won the National Book Award for poetry in 1960, he offers portraits of his New England relatives through whom he studies himself and his origins. It was with this volume that critics began to speak of Lowell as a confessional poet. For the "Union Dead" (1964), another collection, continued the exploration of his own and the United States' past and present. Among Lowell's other prizes were the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize (1961) and the 1962 Bollingen Prize of $2,500, which he shared with Richmond Lattimore, for "Imitations."

Lowell was also well known for his active political concerns. Bitterly opposed to the Vietnam War, he caused a sensation in 1965 when he rejected a White House invitation to appear at a festival of the arts. In his letter to President Johnson, he wrote: "Every serious artist knows that he cannot enjoy public celebration without making subtle public commitments." He demonstrated against the war (notably with Norman Mailer at a vast gathering at the Pentagon in 1967), spoke repeate