Robert Lowell and the Cold War

Abstract

E know Robert Lowell (1917-77) as a pacifist poet, a Vman who consistently opposed militarism and war in his life and writings. After denouncing World War II in an eloquent public letter to President Roosevelt, he served time in prison as a conscientious objector and then published poems critical of the war in Land of Unlikeness (1944) and Lord Weary's Castle (1946). A quarter of a century later, those events and responses uncannily repeated themselves. After denouncing the Vietnam War in an eloquent public letter to President Johnson, Lowell participated in Senator Eugene McCarthy's antiwar campaign for the presidency and the March on the Pentagon and then published poems critical of the war in Near the Ocean (1966) and Notebook 1967-68 (1969).' Stated that succinctly, Lowell's pacifism may appear to be steadfast and principled. A closer examination, however, reveals a more complex and ambiguous narrative. Lowell's attitudes and behaviors were volatile rather than stable. He ricocheted