RELEASE: at once
WRITTEN: October 23, 1998
CONTACT: Shawn Presley, 740-427-5592, [email protected]
Kenyon College celebrates the life and work of poet Robert Lowell
GAMBIER, OHIO--To mark its sixtieth anniversary, the Kenyon Review will recognize perhaps the most influential of America's postwar poets by hosting a "Celebration of Robert Lowell" on Friday and Saturday, November 6 and 7, on the campus of Kenyon College. The weekend will feature distinguished critics, scholars, and writers who will present an engaging look at the life and times of this legendary figure.
The celebration takes place sixty years after Lowell (1917-77) left Harvard University to attend Kenyon, where he studied under John Crowe Ransom, who, in the winter of 1938, published the first issue of the Review. Lowell graduated summa cum laude in 1940 with a degree in classics. In the decades following, he became one of the nation's most noted poets and the Review became one of the world's best-known literary magazines.
Among those taking part in the event are
*Frank Bidart, poet, editor of The Collected Poems of Robert Lowell, and professor of English at Wellesley College;
*Robert Dana, poet;
*Robert Giroux, editor, book publisher, and author;
*Jorie Graham, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and professor in the creative-writing department at the University of Iowa;
*Saskia Hamilton, director of literary programs at the Lannan Foundation;
*Wyatt Prunty, director of the Sewanee Writers' Conference and professor of English at the University of the South;
*Richard Tillinghast, poet, Lowell biographer, and professor of English at the University of Michigan; and
*Helen Vendler, critic and professor of English at Harvard University.
"When I talk with the guests for the weekend, I hear the fullness in their voices," says Susan Spaid, coordinator of the Review's celebration. "It's a palpable sound of love and recognition of Lowell's work that they are conveying. This is more than just an academic event."
According to David H. Lynn, editor of the Review and an associate professor of English at the College, a reevaluation of Lowell's work and his status as a literary figure is taking place. "Some critics have argued that Lowell's work has not held up over time, that its meaning is transient and now relegated to a bygone era," he says. "Other critics and scholars, including those who will be attending our celebration, proclaim that Lowell's work is not only insightful and enduring in its own right but has also been profoundly influential on the next generation of poets."
Lowell taught English literature at Kenyon in the early 1940s. His first book of poems, Land of Unlikeness, appeared in 1944; Lord Weary's Castle, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Prize, appeared in 1946. This recognition resulted in Lowell's appointment as consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress from 1947 to 1948. In 1951, he published The Mills of the Kavanaughs, which may be said to bring an end to the first phase of his career. Life Studies, which appeared in 1959 and won the National Book Award, was viewed as a breakthrough into a new phase in Lowell's writing.
Lowell continued publishing throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In 1965, he publicly declined President Lyndon Johnson's invitation to the White House festival of the arts in protest of the Vietnam War. The Dolphin, published in 1973, won Lowell his second Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He died of heart failure in New York City on September 12, 1977.
The Review's "Celebration of Robert Lowell" is funded by a grant from Richard H. Levey, a 1968 graduate of Kenyon, and the Shiffman Foundation. All events will take place in the College's Bolton Theater. For more information, contact Spaid at 740-427-5650, or visit the Review's web site http://www.kenyonreview.com.
The schedule is as follows:
Friday, November 6
Frank Bidart: "'You didn't write, you rewrote': Revision and the Forthcoming Edition of Robert Lowell's Collected Poems," 7:30 p.m.
Helen Vendler: "Robert Lowell: Depression as Form," 8:30 p.m. Saturday, November 7
Frank Bidart, Wyatt Prunty, and Richard Tillinghast in a panel discussion entitled "Lowell on the Page," 9:30 a.m.
Robert Dana: "The Evolution of Lowell's Language," 11:00 a.m.
Robert Giroux, Robert Dana, and Saskia Hamilton in a panel discussion entitled "Lowell off the Page," 2:00 p.m.
Richard Tillinghast: "Lowell as Muse," 3:30 p.m.
Jorie Graham and friends of Robert Lowell reading from his poems, 8:00 p.m.
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