Volume 35, Number 3 · March 3, 1988
Portraits by Lowell
By Anthony Hecht
Robert Lowell: Collected Prose
edited and introduced by Robert Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 377 pp., $25.00
T.S. Eliot, in conversation with C.S. Lewis, maintained that poets themselves were the best critics of poetry, whereas Lewis opposed this view, declaring that one did not have to be a trained chef to be a discriminating gourmet. Robert Lowell's prose is criticism of a very high and very special kind, being often akin to portraiture, and self-portraiture, as well as memoir and dazzlingly brilliant meditation. This book will enchant everyone who cares for Lowell's poetry, as well as anyone interested in American letters, if those two categories are in any way distinct. We are greatly indebted to Robert Giroux for assembling the book, and putting it together was no easy task, as the brief introduction makes clear. Whatever else it is, it is a volume of energetic prose and piercing insight, so lively and persuasive that even when one finds oneself, as I occasionally have, in disagreement, one's respect for the writer is in no way diminished.
Review, 5720 words
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