(1917 - 1977 / Boston / United States)

poet Robert Lowell
#205 on top 500 poets

Quotations

  • ''At it in its familiar twang: "My friend,
    Cut your own throat. Cut your own throat. Now! Now!"
    September twenty-second, Sir, the bough
    Cracks with the unpicked apples, and at dawn
    The small-mouth bass breaks water, gorged with spawn.''
    Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. After the Surprising Conversions (l. 42-46). . . Selected Poems [Robert Lowell]. (Rev. ed. 1977; repr. 1993) Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
    13 person liked.
    		11 person did not like.
  • ''this planned
    Babel of Boston where our money talks''
    Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. As a Plane Tree by the Water (l. 2-3). . . Oxford Book of American Verse, The. F. O. Matthiessen, ed. (1950) Oxford University Press.
    5 person liked.
    		14 person did not like.
  • ''Our fathers wrung their bread from stocks and stones
    And fenced their gardens with the Redman's bones;''
    Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Children of Light (l. 1-2). . . Oxford Book of American Verse, The. F. O. Matthiessen, ed. (1950) Oxford University Press.
    11 person liked.
    		10 person did not like.
  • ''the mud
    Flies from his hunching wings and beak—my heart,
    The blue kingfisher dives on you in fire.''
    Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Colloquy in Black Rock (l. 24-26). . . Selected Poems [Robert Lowell]. (Rev. ed. 1977; repr. 1993) Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
    7 person liked.
    		10 person did not like.
  • ''O mud
    For watermelons gutted to the crust,
    Mud for the mole-tide harbor, mud for mouse,
    Mud for the armored Diesel fishing tubs that thud
    A year and a day to wind and tide; the dust
    Is on this skipping heart that shakes my house,''
    Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Colloquy in Black Rock (l. 11-16). . . Selected Poems [Robert Lowell]. (Rev. ed. 1977; repr. 1993) Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
    1 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''Eliot dead, you saying,
    "And who is left to understand my jokes?
    My old Brother in the arts . . . and besides, he was a smash of
    poet."''
    Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Ezra Pound (l. 7-9). . . Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company.
    2 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''And I, "Who else has been in Purgatory?"
    And he, "To begin with a swelled head and end with swelled
    feet."''
    Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Ezra Pound (l. 13-14). . . Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company.
    2 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''Their monument sticks like a fishbone
    in the city's throat.
    Its Colonel is as lean
    as a compass-needle.''
    Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. For the Union Dead (l. 29-32). . . Selected Poems [Robert Lowell]. (Rev. ed. 1977; repr. 1993) Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
    1 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
    giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
    a savage servility
    slides by on grease.''
    Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. For The Union Dead, st. 17, For The Union Dead (1964). Last stanza.
    1 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''Colonel Shaw
    and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
    on St. Gaudens shaking Civil War relief,
    propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.''
    Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. For the Union Dead (l. 21-24). . . Selected Poems [Robert Lowell]. (Rev. ed. 1977; repr. 1993) Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
    1 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.

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Skunk Hour

(for Elizabeth Bishop)

Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer is first selectman in our village;
she's in her dotage.

Thirsting for

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