Sunday, July 09, 2006

Life Studies by Robert Lowell

Poetry collection. I was plugging at this off and on over a few weeks, reading it on coffee breaks at Starbucks, lunch hour in the cafeteria, buses. Not with my comfort reading at home in the bath. Finally finished it while waiting for a bus at the mall.

Interesting. Bits of masculine emotion and childhood I had difficulty relating to, bits of history I liked, faintly religious musings I was fascinated by, and at the very end some moments from a breakdown, and after, that helped me understand why Alvarez considered it such an important book.

The style... I'll have to read it again just to absorb the nuances... rhymes so subtle I missed them on first reading, rhythm faint, never jarring.

But much of it didn't grip me, quite.

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