Lowell, Robert Traill Spence
Lowell, Robert Traill Spence ( 1917 – 77 ),American poet, born in Boston, of venerable New England families on both his father's and his mother's side. He was educated at Kenyon College, where he became friendly with R. Jarrell and J. C. Ransom , of whose influence he later wrote (Kenyon Collegia, 1974 ) ‘The kind of poet I am was largely determined by the fact that I grew up in the heyday of the New Criticism. From the beginning, I was preoccupied with technique, fascinated by the past, tempted by other languages.’ In 1940 he married his first wife, the novelist Jean Stafford, and became a fanatical convert to Roman Catholicism: his first volume of verse, Land of Unlikeness ( 1944 ), betrays the conflict of Catholicism and his Boston ancestry. He was jailed for six months during the Second World War as, in effect, a conscientious objector. His second volume, Lord Weary's Castle ( 1946 ),...
[The entire page is 430 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
