A Dramatic Posture in Robert Lowell's Poems

A Dramatic Posture in Robert Lowell's Poems

Robert Lowell is well-known for his "confessional" poems. After his Life Studies (1959) many of his poems were written clearly enough to show his personal sufferings with little disguise. The reader is likely to be embarrassed when forced to confront his miseries from alcoholism to periodical mental illness. This might be a reason he is now not so exclaimed as he was in his lifetime. But, considering no poem, lyric or epic, excludes completely the poet's voice, the proper question should be given as to how much the voice is objectified, not as to whether it is confessional or not. In some of Lowell's best poems such as "Memories of West Street and Lepke," "Colloquy in Black Rock," and "To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage," the poet's personal feeling is powerful enough to overflow spontaneously, but at the same time it is well controlled in a dramatic or historical setting. The poems are full of particular places, times, and persons. They provide a setting or situation where the personal is externalized and the historical becomes personal. This is the way many of Lowell's best poems create dramatic tension while they are spoken in the poet's naked voice.