Grey Gowrie
Poor Passing Facts
Robert Lowell: A Biography
Faber & Faber 527pp £12.50 order from our bookshop
Asked to name the greatest American poet, Robert Lowell once replied ‘Milton’. The joke had a point to it. Contemporary English poets in the mainstream admire poets like Marvell or Robert Graves who set themselves limits and succeed within them. Ambition and scale are the American dream, the American hang-up. Added to the intensity of all good poetry, they take their toll in the lives of the makers. Ian Hamilton’s biography is best at considering the cost of Lowell’s achievement and a life, as the poet himself put it,
not avoiding injury to others,
not avoiding injury to myself –
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Reading Taylor’s book has also made me join a book club. I did not like the January book; I did enjoy drinking gin while saying why.'
@clamorousvoice explores the history of women readers.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/she-readers
'When the language starts functioning as a character in fiction, when it is there drawing attention to itself ... It’s not anything that anybody really takes seriously.'
Our interview with Anthony Burgess from 1983.
http://ow.ly/5u0y50yrjoO
'Sabotage became so prevalent that bankers even created their own terms – ‘asymmetric information’, ‘lack of financial literacy’, ‘the principal-agent dilemma’ – to describe how they might turn a dime from customers’ gullibility or ignorance.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-criminals-of-the-universe