Surviving the Marketplace: Robert Lowell and the Sixties

Abstract

N the 1960s, Robert Lowell took his career in an unexpected direction. Having won the Pulitzer Prize and inspired the devotion of literary critics and fellow practitioners in the previous two decades, he had established himself as the leading poet of his generation. But in the sixties, more than being warmly appreciated by a small elite audience, Lowell became a sensation: an American celebrity and a figure of political influence. In a few short years, he joined a select group of American poets who had bridged the great divide between academic and popular culture. This extraordinary stage in Lowell's career deserves wider critical attention than it has yet received, for it sheds significant light not only on his personal poetics but on the workings of America's literary and cultural history. Scion of a dynastic American family, Lowell had always garnered more public attention than other modem poets, who, as we know, spent much of their time composing essays about the disappearance of their audiences. While the publication of Life Studies in 1959 guaranteed Lowell's critical reputation and reaffirmed his position as the preeminent poet of his generation, it also foreshadowed his dramatic rise to national prominence a mere five years later. The story of Lowell's ascent begins in 1964, when President Lyndon Baines Johnson asked him to read at the White House Arts Festival. Citing his objections to LBJ's policies on Vietnam, Lowell declined. He also sent a copy of his letter of refusal to the New York Times, whose editors, knowing that a Lowell could always make news, decided to print it on the front page. Furious, Johnson responded, accusing Lowell of publicity seeking and 44