Paula Hayes – författare

Robert Lowell and the Confessional Voice returns to the poet’s early works, such as Land of Unlikeness and Lord Weary’s Castle, in search of a relationship between Lowell’s early poetry and his turn to a confessional style of writing in the 1950s. Lowell’s early poetry is often overshadowed by the emergence of his confessional poetry (that develops in Life Studies; however, instead of Lowell’s early poetry being eclipsed by Life Studies, a remembrance of his early poetry is necessary as a way of understanding Lowell’s evolution as a poet. The early poetry provides readers and scholars of Lowell with a Puritan paradigm and the ethos of an American narrative that Lowell never fully abandons but only perpetually deconstructs.

I remember the first time I saw or should I say became aware of him. My walk from Pt Authority was determined by how many homeless I saw. While I was getting my coffee and bagel from my guy on the street who sold breakfast every morning no matter the weather; I looked over to my left at the crowd in the park and saw him. He had a few people around him talking, smiling and just mesmerized by him. He looked at me and our eyes met, for on a few seconds and then he turned back to those who were hanging on his every word. It felt like a lifetime; his eyes went through me into my soul, if only for a moment. I went about my morning giving the morning events only a fleeting thought; but somehow, I was changed; somehow, I saw something I did not know what and maybe never really understand.