Robert Lowell

Latest Articles

Poems, prose, and the New Yorker

Elizabeth Bishop goes pop
After John Ashbery described Elizabeth Bishop as "the writer’s writer’s writer," reviewers repeated the witticism as if it were true. Actually, beginning with her first book, Bishop got awards and grants — that master poet politician Robert Lowell was in her corner — that gave her much more public recognition than Merrill's phrase suggests was the case.
By WILLIAM CORBETT | February 02, 2011

Midnight ramblers

Rock legend Peter Wolf serves dinner and verse to the Phoenix ’s poet .
In rock ’n’ roll, it was possible to live in Harvard Square, be a musician — a local musician — and be able to pay your rent and find restaurants where you could eat and buy food and survive, and feel that there was a sense of . . . future, with hope and opportunity.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 08, 2010

Ring in the new

Haydn trios, Kirchner's 90th-birthday concert, Cantata Singers' Britten, Teatro Lirico's Aida
If 2009 lives up to the grace and power of some of the concerts that began it, we can look forward to a vintage year.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 20, 2009

Lift every voice!

Classical goodies for 2009
Opera is the big word for 2009.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 30, 2008

Review: My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poems of Jack Spicer

Strong spirits
Spicer believed that words are magic, that they have the power to "do" good and harm to people.
By WILLIAM CORBETT | December 19, 2008

What? This old thing?

A guide to Boston's secret trove of peculiar artifacts
Glossy guidebooks often extol Boston as one of America’s most “European” cities, a euphemism that means that we’re . . . you know, wicked old.
By JACQUELINE HOUTON | August 27, 2008

Bishop, after all

The ‘poet’s poet’ gets canonized
To enter a Bishop poem with the mind and senses wide open is to be scrubbed back to first principles.
By SVEN BIRKERTS | February 05, 2008

Outsmarting himself

Can race trump the egghead factor in Obama’s bid for the nomination?
Much of Barack Obama’s appeal is rooted in his promise to bring a new style of thoughtful politics to Washington.
By STEVEN STARK | July 20, 2007

High Numbers

Elliott Carter at 85, Pavarotti at Boston Garden, plus Russell Sherman and the Boston Philharmonic
This article originally appeared in the March 19, 1993 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 16, 2006

Harvard Square

Ground zero for so much, for so many
Harvard Square was very different 40 years ago.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 15, 2006

Lions and lambs

Pynchon isn’t all you’ll be reading this fall
The season is notable for the return to bookstores of canonical names like Atwood, Ginsberg, Kinnell, le Carré, Munro, Pynchon, and Vidal plus a fair share of younger lions like Eggers, Julavits, and Muldoon.
By JOHN FREEMAN | September 13, 2006

Glower power

The films of Peter Whitehead at the HFA
It’s a mysterious career. To Whitehead’s credit, it’s not a career in the normal sense at all.
By A.S. HAMRAH | September 06, 2006