Life Studies

To be honest, I didn't know the New York Sun covered poetry until I stumbled upon this reconsideration of Robert Lowell's Life Studies by Adam Kirsch. For some time, Life Studies was my favorite collection of poetry. I like the term "favorite" because it means I can change my mind periodically like any good flirt. "Best" or "greatest" are much harder. Nonetheless, Life Studies was also on my list of 15 Greatest American Poetry Collections of the 20th Century, a homework assignment from my then-teacher Liam Rector. 

Kirsch's smart piece absolves Lowell of creating confessional poetry: "It would be unfair, however, to lay the blame for so much bad writing at Lowell's door. Just as Marx was not a Marxist, so Lowell was not really a confessional poet." Kirsch understands the bad reputation that the term has gained in the past couple of decades. But why? All movements spawn poor imitations. Why has confessionalism become the whipping boy? There are still many fine poets writing in the personal style, revealing what is necessary in deference to the poem: Adrienne Rich, Marie Howe, Mark Doty, et al.

This problem has been more on my mind than usual because I am about to begin teaching creative writing to high school students, a fun job I've been lucky enough to have for the past couple of summers. The biggest challenge I face with these students is getting them to rethink their position that abstract is better. "If I'm too specific," they argue, "my reader won't be able to relate." One bright girl explained to me last July, "I want it to be vague; I want it to be any beach." It's difficult to explain how in the specific lies the universal. And so I use examples. "Skunk Hour," perhaps, to show how no one's mind is right, though Lowell means it literally when he writes,

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
I watched for love-cars. Light turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town....
My mind's not right.