Evocations of Classical Greece and Rome pervade Robert Lowell’s entire oeuvre. His fascination with Latin literature in particular shaped his own poetry. The density and involved syntax of Virgil and Propertius are echoed in the crabbed and tortured involutions of Lowell’s earlier poetry. His confessional verse is in part a response to Catullan frankness. His view of America as declining from republic into empire was colored by the historiography of Suetonius and Tacitus, in whose portraits of imperial tyrants Lowell found a frame for depicting the darker elements of his own character. He essayed many (usually very free) translations or versions of Greek and Roman poems, often with autobiographical inflections. A number of “original” poems can be shown to have originated as translations from Catullus, Virgil, Propertius, or Horace. In contrast with his almost obsessive engagement with Roman literature, Lowell’s engagement with Greek was less extensive, often mediated through later European literature, and (notably in his versions of Aeschylus) less vivid.

Certain poetic practices in Mexico which have traditionally received less attention from scholars have recently regained currency, and even urgency in poetic critique. This chapter explores the openly political and popular underside of twentieth-century Mexican poetry, starting with the Estridentismo movement and moving on to works by José Emilio Pacheco, Eduardo Lizalde, Renato Leduc, Efraín Huerta, Rosario Castellanos, Jaime Sabines, Francisco Hernández, Jaime Reyes, and Ricardo Castillo, among others, as well as the political poetry recently reprinted in the twenty volumes of the Archivo negro de la poesía mexicana. The chapter also examines two significant but historically silenced trends: poetry written by women and literature in Indigenous languages.