Decided a week or so ago to put the great Robert Lowell read-through to one side during the Fasting Month. But ahead of the hiatus I've been trying to press on and am now well into his sonnet collection The Dolphin based on the breakdown of his second marriage to the Lizzie of For Lizzie and Harriet. Have enjoyed both of these books more than the sonnets in History, but none of this later poetry matches the brilliance of his earlier work for this reader (and it seems this is the critical consensus.)
There are great lines everywhere, and the occasional gem-like sequence, but rarely anything close to a fully achieved poem. And it all seems so privately obsessive - even the more 'public' material in History. Though it's true that awareness of Lowell's fragile mental state goes a long way towards reading him in a forgiving mode.
But, to be honest, I don't trust him. You don't need great depth of insight to sense he's behaving very badly in the writing of The Dolphin - sacrificing those closest to him on the altar of his art. Including himself, I suppose. And behaving very badly as a husband and father.
I think the younger me may, at some point, have accepted the idea that great artists sometimes needed to behave badly. This is no longer the case.
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