Abstract
As he recovered from a mental breakdown following the death of his mother in 1954, Robert Lowell began the struggle to reconstruct his identity in a world without the powerful figures of his parents. Experimenting with various linguistic treatments over the rest of the decade, Lowell produced the work that would become his most famous volume, Life Studies. Terri Witek uses unpublished drafts of some of the most famous passages in Life Studies to show what happened when Lowell confronted his own identity problem as writing problems. Witek examines Lowell's pattern of revising away from the vivid presences that had shaped his identity and his work towards a carefully negotiated position of poetic power. The book also treats the delicate maneuovering Lowell engages in as he moves into the next generation and presents himself as uneasy husband and father at the end of Life Studies. What emerges through the process of Lowell's revisions is an entirely identifiable poetic voice that yearns toward, but will not allow, anything beyond its power. This provocative study should be welcomed by all Lowell enthusiasts, as well as by scholars and students of modern poetry.
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