Abstract
n his biography of Robert Lowell, Ian Hamilton tells an anecdote that now adorns discussions of Lowell's poem Memories of West Street and Lepke. During his arraignment on the charge of refusing to register for the draft, spent a few days in West Street Jail, where the infamous Louis Czar Buchalter, leader of a gang of professional killers known as awaited execution for ordering the killing of a candy store clerk. According to Hamilton's 1980 conversation with Jim Peck, a longtime antiwar activist, Lowell was in a cell next to Lepke, you know, Murder Incorporated, and Lepke says to him: 'I'm in for killing. What are you in for?' 'Oh, I'm in for refusing to kill' (91). It's easy to imagine saying such a thing, acutely aware of the ironies and contradictions of state power. Every indication is that did meet Lepke; certainly Memories of West Street and recounts the profound impression of the poet's encounter with the head of Murder IncorpoConfusing a Naive Robert and
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