Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell (born March 1, 1917 in Boston , Massachusetts , † September 12, 1977 in New York City ) was an American poet .
Life
Lowell comes from one of the oldest families in Boston: he was the son of Navy officer Robert Traill Spence Lowell, Sr. and his wife Charlotte Winslow.
After attending private schools in his hometown, Lowell began studying at Harvard University .
At the age of 24, Lowell married the writer Jean Stafford in 1941 ; In 1948 this marriage was divorced again. Lowell married the writer Elizabeth Hardwick the following year .
At the age of 55, Lowell married the third marriage in 1972, the writer Caroline Blackwood . He spent the last years of his life in London with his third wife . Lowell suffered a heart attack while visiting New York and died there on September 12, 1977 at the age of 60.
In 1954 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .
meaning
Lowell became known as a poet of Confessional Poetry and received the Pulitzer Prize in the years after World War II. Descended from a famous and historic Massachusetts family, he volunteered at a small university in Ohio called Kenyon College. His relationship with his family remained conflicting throughout his life. He spent a year in prison as a conscientious objector during World War II. His second volume of poetry, Lord Weary's Castle , won the Pulitzer Prize in 1946. He then began to write in a more personal style. Two volumes, Life Studies and For the Union Dead , contain his most famous works, published in 1959 and 1964, respectively. These poems express both his personal struggles and political beliefs. His band The Dolphin again won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973. He also taught two important students at Harvard University, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton , who became "Confessionalist" poets. He died as one of the most famous poets in the United States.
Works
- Collected poems . Farar, Straus & Giroux, New York 2003, ISBN 0-374-12617-8 .
- Poems . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-608-95099-0 .
literature
- Steven G. Axelrod: The critical response to Robert Lowell. Greenwood, Westport, Conn. 1999, ISBN 0-313-29037-7 .
- Grzegorz Kós´c: Robert Lowell. Uncomfortable epigone of the grands maîtres. Lang, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 3-631-53607-0 .
- Paul Mariani: Lost puritan. Norton, New York 1996, ISBN 0-393-31374-3 .
- Ian Hamilton : Robert Lowell: A Biography. Random House, 1982, ISBN 0-394-71646-9 .
- Kay Redfield Jamison: Robert Lowell: setting the river on fire: a study of genius, mania, and character , New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2017, ISBN 978-0-307-70027-8
Web links
- Literature by and about Robert Lowell in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ^ Members: Robert Lowell. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 11, 2019 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lowell, Robert |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lowell, Robert Traill Spence (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 1, 1917 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Boston |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 12, 1977 |
| Place of death | New York City |