In the nation's throat

"The St. Gauden's memorial was installed at the edge of Boston Common and dedicated amidst a large public ceremony on Memorial Day, 1897," wrote Denise Von Glahn Cooney in "New Sources for 'The "St. Gaudens" in Boston Common (Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and His Colored Regiment)'" (Musical Quarterly 81.1, 1997). In that article, Von Glahn traces the poetic sources behind the musical composition of "Three Places in New England" by Charles Ives (first performed in 1931). It would not be the last time that poetry, music, and film would take up the memorial (see "Robert Gould Shaw" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Saint-Gaudens: An Ode" by Robert Underwood Johnson, "For the Union Dead" by Robert Lowell, "Boston Common" by John Berryman, the film Glory, and the recent PBS documentary about Saint Gaudens, etc.).

The monument by St. Gaudens, wrote Robert Lowell, "sticks like a fishbone / in the city's throat." Clearly Lowell was on to something. His poem sticks in the nation's throat, calling for less empire and more humanity. My guess is that Lowell would have enjoyed David Armitage's The Declaration of Independence, A Global History (2007).

Links

Text of "For the Union Dead" and biography of Robert Lowell (www.poets.org).

*Hear Lowell read the poem (http://college.holycross.edu).

*Hear "For the Union Dead" read by Frank Bidart, Peter Davison, and Robert Pinsky, The Atlantic Monthly (November 1960 and April, 2001).

Commentary about "For the Union Dead" by Helen Vendler, Thomas Travisano, Michael Thurston, Paul Doherty, Alan Williamson, Paul Breslin, on "Modern American Poetry" (www.english.illinois.edu).

Reginald Shepherd, "Robert Lowell and the Massachusetts 54th," (March 28, 2007).

Concerning Charles Ives, "Three Places in New England" (www.musicweb-international.com).

Robert Gould Shaw Memorial Project (www.nga.gov).

Trailer for Glory, directed by Edward Zwick (1989).

2009 Augustus Saint-Gaudens exhibit at the MET, June 30-November 15, 2009 (www.metmuseum.org) (www.tfaoi.com).

David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence, A Global History (2007).

Robert Lowell's Birthday

Edward Byrne celebrates the birthday of Robert Lowell as well as the 50th anniversary of Life Studies on his blog One Poet's Notes with "Robert Lowell and the 'Great' Debate" (March 1, 2009).

William Logan on love & poetry

Today's New York Times Sunday Book Review treat comes from William Logan writing about Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, edited by Thomas Travisano with Saskia Hamilton (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008).

Ian Hamilton on Robert Lowell (1982 interview)

In a 1982 interview, timed for the release of his Robert Lowell, A Biography(1982 USA, 1983 UK), Ian Hamilton spoke about the "mini American invasion" of British poetry during the 1960s by Lowell, Berryman, and Plath. Hamilton ranked Lowell as the "best equipped poet of his generation." Lowell's poem "For the Union Dead" was part public, part private, he said.

Listen to the interview with Don Swaim on Wired for Books.

See Marjorie Perloff's comments on "Florence" from Ohio University.

Jay Parini, Robert Frost, and 25 teenagers...

Jay Parini, biographer of Robert Frost and author of Why Poetry Matters (2008) was asked to administer the sentence of poetry as punishment to 25 teenagers who vandalized Robert Frost's property in December 2007. He said he used Frost's essay "Education by Poetry."

See: "The Best Way Out Is Through," editorial published in The New York Times, June 8, 2008.

p.s. (June 29, 2008):  Based on the above, I ordered the book, and after a quick skim of Why Poetry Matters, I find no mention of Geoffrey Hill.  Does this mean that Hill does not matter to Parini? Probably not, since he's been tagged in his "Poetry Hut Blog" (latest entry tagged, a link to William Logan's Review of A Treatise of Civil Power, blog entry from January 20, 2008), though my guess is that in this book which boasts it uses no jargon, Heaney seems more user-friendly. Why is it that Hill's closeness to the people and to popular culture always seems to be ignored?

Parini reviewed Robert Lowell: Collected Poems for the Guardian (August 9, 2003).

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/poetry/0,6121,1014876,00.html