Introduction

Summary

More than one hundred years have passed since Robert Lowell’s birth in 1917. For today’s readers, the period of time in which Lowell was active – the middle portion of the twentieth century – is increasingly remote. Concepts like “Cold War,” “Vietnam,” or “Watergate” get their respective paragraphs in the history books, while figures like Robert Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy are increasingly known only to specialists. That Boston once had a quasi-aristocratic class may be amusing now. Concepts of race and gender were challenged politically and institutionally in Lowell’s lifetime but have now become ingredients of an active and controversial discourse of constant self-positioning. All these matters are relevant to a contextually informed reading of Robert Lowell’s poetry.