02 A pivotal book in Robert Lowell's groundbreaking career, Notebook is, as Seamus Heaney has written, "a massive accumulation of unrhymed sonnets, poems of immeditae, unprepossessing, blunt-edged force, which record not so much the public events of [the late 1960s] as the reactions which the events provoked in Lowell's consciousness."
A pivotal book in Robert Lowell's groundbreaking career, Notebook is, as Seamus Heaney has written, "a massive accumulation of unrhymed sonnets, poems of immeditae, unprepossessing, blunt-edged force, which record not so much the public events of [the late 1960s] as the reactions which the events provoked in Lowell's consciousness."
Industry Reviews
"The poet offers an account of his personal history as it has painstakingly ordered itself in images. It is the response of a racked but magnanimous mind, the response of a poet. . . . Many of the events [in Notebook] are drawn from our common history, our wars and demonstrations, our assassinations and riots. Throughout burns a passionate intelligence, a conscience, which the reader feels is trustworthy." --William Meredith, The New York Times Book Review
"What Lowell has done is to make poetry difficult again. This has nothing to do with intellectual puzzles: instead, it is the more strenuous creative difficulty of a poetry molded precisely to a powerful and mature talent. [Lowell] appears in Notebook as a very subtle man, unashamedly intelligent, well read and alert, whose poems are at once delicate and piercing." --A. Alvarez, The Observer (London) The poet offers an account of his personal history as it has painstakingly ordered itself in images. It is the response of a racked but magnanimous mind, the response of a poet. . . . Many of the events [in "Notebook"] are drawn from our common history, our wars and demonstrations, our assassinations and riots. Throughout burns a passionate intelligence, a conscience, which the reader feels is trustworthy. "William Meredith, The New York Times Book Review"
What Lowell has done is to make poetry difficult again. This has nothing to do with intellectual puzzles: instead, it is the more strenuous creative difficulty of a poetry molded precisely to a powerful and mature talent. [Lowell] appears in "Notebook" as a very subtle man, unashamedly intelligent, well read and alert, whose poems are at once delicate and piercing. "A. Alvarez, The Observer (London)"" "The poet offers an account of his personal history as it has painstakingly ordered itself in images. It is the response of a racked but magnanimous mind, the response of a poet. . . . Many of the events [in "Notebook"] are drawn from our common history, our wars and demonstrations, our assassinations and riots. Throughout burns a passionate intelligence, a conscience, which the reader feels is trustworthy."--William Meredith, "The New York Times Book Review"
"What Lowell has done is to make poetry difficult again. This has nothing to do with intellectual puzzles: instead, it is the more strenuous creative difficulty of a poetry molded precisely to a powerful and mature talent. [Lowell] appears in "Notebook" as a very subtle man, unashamedly intelligent, well read and alert, whose poems are at once delicate and piercing."--A. Alvarez, "The Observer (London)"
