Robert Lowell Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Hilene Flanzbaum

SOURCE: "Surviving the Marketplace: Robert Lowell and the Sixties," in New England Review, Vol. LXVIII, No. 1, March, 1995, pp. 44-57.

In the following essay, Flanzbaum discusses Lowell's literary fame, political protest, and critical reception during the 1960s. Flanzbaum contends that Lowell's public ambition "should not be understood as a venal thirst for fame but rather as a result of his yearning to find common ground with the large American audience."

In the 1960s, Robert Lowell took his career in an unexpected direction. Having won the Pulitzer Prize and inspired the devotion of literary critics and fellow practitioners in the previous two decades, he had established himself as the leading poet of his generation. But in the sixties, more than being warmly appreciated by a small elite audience, Lowell became a sensation: an American celebrity and a figure of political influence. In a few short years, he joined a select...
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