Chapter 33 - “All the Blessings of This Consuming Chance”

Summary

Robert Lowell was the most esteemed American poet of his era, enjoying a reputation comparable to that of his great modernist predecessors T.S.Eliot and William Butler Yeats. Lowell's influence on later generations continues to be felt and of the middle-generation poets he is second only to Bishop in this regard. Lowell was drawn to address the turmoil of his era in no small measure because his own life was itself manifestly turbulent. The careers of John Berryman and Theodore Roethke parallel that of Lowell in several crucial ways. Although both were slightly older than Lowell, Roethke was born in 1908, and Berryman in 1914, they rose to their greatest prominence, as Lowell did, in the 1950s and 1960s. Berryman remained rather uncomfortably close to his mother throughout his life, and the death of his father became one of the overarching concerns of The Dream Songs.