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Friday, June 20, 2003

# Posted 4:06 PM by Patrick Belton  

SO SPEND IT on THIS!: Slate has a piece up this afternoon (by A.O. Scott, keeping to our Scott theme for today...) on Robert Lowell, making the important (to my mind) point that: "For more than 20 years, Lowell seemed to be more read about than read. Bidart's goal of restoring Lowell to his rightful place as a great poet may therefore require rescuing the poet from his biographers." Of course, Lowell's poems were about Lowell - and New England's Puritan and Brahmin past, which contribute to his psychic universe, together with the conflicting influences of Kenyon southern agrarianism and his very non-Brahmin bounded conversion to Rome - but precisely for that point, he's perhaps best approached through his poetry, on his own terms.

So for those of you who, like me, find yourselves alone on a Friday night, might find in Lowell a suitable pillow-companion. Start here, for starters...
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