Book contents
- Robert Lowell in Context
- Robert Lowell In Context
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Places
- Part II American Politics, American Wars
- Part III Some Literary Models
- Part IV Contemporaries
- Chapter 11 T. S. Eliot
- Chapter 12 Ezra Pound
- Chapter 13 John Berryman
- Chapter 14 Warren and Jarrell
- Chapter 15 Elizabeth Bishop
- Part V Life, Illness, and the Arts
- Part VI Reputation and New Contexts
- Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 13 - John Berryman
from Part IV - Contemporaries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2024
- Robert Lowell in Context
- Robert Lowell In Context
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Places
- Part II American Politics, American Wars
- Part III Some Literary Models
- Part IV Contemporaries
- Chapter 11 T. S. Eliot
- Chapter 12 Ezra Pound
- Chapter 13 John Berryman
- Chapter 14 Warren and Jarrell
- Chapter 15 Elizabeth Bishop
- Part V Life, Illness, and the Arts
- Part VI Reputation and New Contexts
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
Robert Lowell’s sense of connection with John Berryman was deep, so much so that one critic has suggested that “[a]lthough they never collaborated, their achievement was, in many respects, a joint one.” In his poem “For John Berryman,” Lowell references several points of contact between the two poets, from their “last years” back to their earlier “good days,” but Lowell’s sense of Berryman is still hard to pin down. This is partly a question of context – how the Lowell–Berryman relationship has been positioned in relation to various cultural and critical trajectories of twentieth-century American poetry – but it can also be explained in terms of the ways that Lowell’s poems record the poet’s shifting sense of his contemporary’s profile and achievement. Paying close attention to Lowell’s poetic engagement with Berryman, this chapter expands our sense of the relationship between two of the most important poets of the so-called Middle Generation.
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- Robert Lowell In Context , pp. 140 - 148Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024