Life Studies & for the Union Dead

I read this poem again on Martin Luther King Day, a fitting day for this poem, a tribute to the Union dead of the Civil War and a particular remembrance of the black soldiers who wore the uniform of the Union-- particularly of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment (made famous to non-Civil War students by the movie Glory several years ago). The 54th Massachusetts was the first black regiment to march from the North to fight the Confederacy. These men were quite brave knowing that in battle they would likely get little or no quarter, and if captured they would most assuredly be sent south back to slavery. These men had much to prove, what with years of racism from North and South to be broken and defeated by their bravery and sacrifices-- not to mention the Confederate army that they would later face on the battlefield. They would win ever-lasting fame for their courage during their doomed assault on Fort Wagner at Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, July, 1863. The attack would be a night assault on this heavily guarded fort. The fighting would be intense and the 54th would not be successful. Their white colonel, Robert Gould Shaw would be killed, and almost half the regiment would be lost. The first Medal of Honor for a black man would be earned there. They marched down Beacon Street, with the Massachusetts State House on one side and Boston Common on the other - off to war, off to death and glory on a twin mission; to fight for the Union and show the world that they were equal in ability to whites. Directly across the street from the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Street there now stands the brilliant monument by Augustus St. Gaudens, forever commemorating the 54th, the first black regiment and their white commander Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. This monument on Beacon Hill is one of the finest monuments of any kind in the United States. As a tribute to Shaw and the 54th it is unparalleled in the physical world; but in the emotional world, the world of poetry, Robert Lowell comes quite close. Lowell brilliantly describes the monument to the 54th and works it into the life of Boston that foremost of abolition cities of the North. Standing before the 54th monument on Beacon Hill, as the crowds walk swiftly by and the traffic speeds along past the State House, one can almost hear the men breath as they are forever frozen in bronze on their march south to battle. There are few monuments in bronze as lifelike as this one: it is an incredible tribute to the 54th and their commander and adorns the city of Boston as fittingly as the obelisk at Bunker Hill or the colonial historical sites of Adams, Revere, Hancock, and several miles to the west, Lexington and Concord. Lowell's "For the Union Dead" is a successful poem on so many levels and succeeds completely where Tate's "Ode to the Confederate Dead" so totally fails. It unifies time and place, and brings context and permanence where everything seems to be shifting and changing. As a tribute to the 54th

Lowell is of the vanguard of American twentieth century poets, a man who created many brilliant works other than the two joined in this volume. In such poems in Life Studies as Beyond the Alps and A Mad Negro Soldier Confined in Munich, as well as his portraits of various friends and family, we discover a man capable of both acid humor and outright sadness. However, in Life Studies, these excellent poems are overshadowed by the towering biographical essay 91 Revere Street. In this touching memoir, Lowell describes distant, illustrious relatives, Amy Lowell being a famous but ostracized example, friendships wrecked in childhood, disquietude over a girlfriend who soils herself in class (in his embarrassment, Lowell sits in it), his formative years on the periphery of polite, conservative Bostonian society, and his fathers coarse, difficult superiors and buddies that cropped up in the father's job with the Navy. Though his poems here are outstanding, an uncomfortable question arises when one considers this essay: Would Lowell have been better off to employ his time as a prose stylist, not a poet?For the Union Dead validates Lowell's decision to declare poetry his mode of expression. Poems such as the dolorous My Last Evening with Uncle Devereaux Winslow and Terminal Days at Beverly Farm expose a man groping for hope after the deaths of close relatives; Waking in the Blue and Myopia: A night explore, respectively, Lowell's mental illness and attendant three month hospitalization, and a night of insomnia that becomes a maelstrom of tortured reflections and half-hewn thoughts; The Drinker explores alcoholism as a product of foiled love, with a question as to whether pathology or sheer carelessness and love of idleness is the underlying shibboleth. Water, the poem that stoked my love for Lowell, uses a maritime theme to express sorrow over a lost love. Beyond the Alps, from Life Studies, is reprised here with an elided stanza reinserted at the behest of coeval John Berryman.Lowell is one of those poets so gifted, so erudite, so steeped in classical literature, it's hard to grasp that, as he explains it, he was "less rather than more bookish than most children." Much of the isolation evinced in Lowell's poetry, as well as the restlessness of his life, both as youth and adult, are radiantly eviscerated in these two collections.

Most of us probably first read Robert Lowell in high school, and I remember being both repulsed and fascinated by Life Studies when I was a teenager. I am no longer repulsed, but simply fascinated by Lowell's writing. Life Studies' haunting biographies of Lowell's relatives frame the poet's autobiographical memoir of growing up with "no girls or undesirables in [his] set"; his attention to detail constantly mesmerizes the reader as we tour a New England catalogue of memorabilia, illness, and affect. Lowell's resolutely melancholy, nostalgic, and idiosycratic tone reminds the reader that poetry may speak most generally when it is most particular in its subject. I've spent twenty years thinking about these poems, and the thoughts are never stale, even if the lives they chronicle are preternaturally decayed.

For a long time, one of my favorite poems has been Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour", but I have never read the book which was the context around it. Lowell is one of those writers who are often pushed down your throat as being "The Most Important Poet Ever!" by college professors and I have to admit that this attitude lead me to resist reading further. I want to say that this was a mistake, because of how much I enjoyed this book, but I'm not sure how well I could have appreciated these poetry books had I been younger. They are not simple about anything they touch-- not histories (public or private), not love, not death, not depression. They are complicated words that are painted in detailed layers, so the richness gets deeper the longer you look. The setting is so subtle that when Lowell does say something overt, it comes as a distinct shock. I didn't want to stop reading the book when it was over, and went back and started reading the poems again-- it was that compelling.

In LIFE STUDIES, published in 1959, Lowell described his experiences growing up in a prominent Boston family, using a style so intimate and revealing that it became known as "confessional poetry." Four years later came FOR THE UNION DEAD, in which he used the same style to address social themes as well as personal ones. Together, these two books constitute a watershed in modern American poetry. In a host of poems, including "Beyond the Alps," "Skunk Hour," and "For the Union Dead," Lowell created a style that was colloquial and contemporary, but echoed the grandeur of a poetic tradition running back to Shakespeare. Of all the American poets to emerge since the war, few have had the wide-ranging influence of Lowell and a young student of his named Sylvia Plath. This is a book that every literate American should know.