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Lord Weary's Castle: The Mills of the Kavanaughs (Harvest/HBJ Book)

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Lord Weary's Castle (awarded Pulitzer Prize of Poetry in 1947) and The Mills of the Kavanaughs established Robert Lowell's early fame. Literary critics widely praised Lowell for his technical brilliance, metrical complexity, and verbal ambiguity - perhaps explaining why Lowell's work is so often challenging, even obscure. I found reading Lord Weary's Castle is not unalike from studying mathematics, slightly too advanced mathematics. Sometimes I would see my way forward after returning again and again to a difficult point, but not infrequently Lowell's meaning remained elusive, just out of reach.

Disaffection, mistrust, anger, and savage criticism (one critic calls it apocalyptic rage) are often tightly linked to personal elements. For example, Lowell, in opposition to his family's New England Protestantism tradition, converted to Catholicism in 1940, and his deep religiosity - combined with his disillusion with mankind - dominate much of this poetry. He specifically targets modern civilization, materialism, and US war policy, particularly the bombing of German cities. (During World War II Lowell served a jail sentence as a conscientious objector.)

Lord Weary's Castle consists of 42 shorter poems. As a tentative guide, I mention that At the Indian Killer's Grave and Christmas Eve Under Hooker's Statue are examples of his disaffected critique of American history; The Exile's Return, War, and The Dead in Europe illustrate Lowell's anti-war sentiments; and The Holy Innocents, Christmas in Black Rock, and Mr. Edwards and the Spider combine moral passion with disillusion.

The second collection The Mills of the Kavanaughs (1951), is comprised of six longer poems, dramatic monologues that are structurally less complex, and more readily comprehended. This is mathematics that I have studied earlier and only need a review.

The title poem, The Mills of the Kavanaughs, is a New England widow's lament for her recently deceased husband. A short introductory paragraph clarifies the setting for this long poem. Falling Asleep over the Aeneid is an old man's dream that muddles his reading of Virgil with his childhood memories of the death of his uncle, a young officer in the Civil War. The third poem, Her Dead Brother, is an unsettling memory of incest.

Mother Marie Therese - death by drowning in 1912 is a poignant, mournful memory of a past now nearly forgotten. Thanksgiving's Over is another dream, this one recalling a wife that committed suicide while living in a sanatorium. The Fat Man in the Mirror is a short, sadly humorous questioning of just how a young, playful boy became the man in the mirror.

The poem David and Bathsheba in the Public Gardens somewhat obscurely contrasts the thoughts of two lovers. (Years later Lowell published a new version in his collection titled For The Union Dead. He wrote: "The Public Garden is a recasting and clarification of an old confusing poem of mine called David and Bathsheba in the Public Garden.")

but what does today really know? Robert Lowell's first book of poems, Lord Weary's Castel, is dense with allusion and firmly situated in time, place, and even space. The collection is full of references to the American New England tradition, especially in its Puritan and Maritime manifestations. As such many of the poems have an arcane, lurching sensibility, perhaps an attempt on Lowell's behalf to recreate the laconic moral world view of Old New England. This is a challenging set of poems to read. They are not sparkling or new in there use of language and/or of aesthetic viewpoint; readers should approach these poems with sleeves rolled up and get ready to work at giving them meaning.

Even for a book of poetry, this one is very dense and requires a lot of mental activity. Lowell was a very cerebral, academic poet, and it's hard to find two lines in a row in this book that don't contain some allusion to classical mythology, religion, or European culture. Nevertheless, Lowell's work somehow manages to avoid conventionality. Just be prepared to do some thinking when reading this book.