Robert
Lowell
On March 1, 1917, Robert Lowell was born into one of
Boston’s oldest and most prominent families. He attended Harvard College for
two years before transferring to Kenyon College, where he studied poetry under
John Crowe Ransom and received an undergraduate degree in 1940. He took
graduate courses at Louisiana State University where he studied with Robert
Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks. Lowell contributed a lot for American poetry, until his sudden death from a heart attack at the
age of 60. Robert Lowell served as a chancellor of the Academy of American
Poets from 1962 until his death in 1977.
To Speak of Woe in Marriage has a free verse with simple rhyming couplets
structure. In this poem Robert Lowell writes about sex without actually
saying the word 'sex'. It is
about how a woman is suffering in her marriage due to her husband’s abusive
attitude and behavior. It is overall in a feeling of despair and pain. The
woman in the poem is afflicted with an abusive husband and from the first line,
hostility is indicated. "The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows
open" gives the feeling of rage. The tension in the room is due to boiling
tempers. As the poem continues, the wife continues describing her husband,
"This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge" seems to
indicate her husband is very willing to say things to please others, but when
it comes to his own nature, he's dangerous and a psychopath. When
she mentioned that he might kill his wife, she is too scared to admit that it
is who might be killed. She
describes his lust in unpleasant ways and wants to keep herself alive, even if
she must run away.
The language in the poem changes from words like ‘us’
and ‘our’ in the beginning to ‘I’ and ‘his’ at the end. This is interesting
because it highlights the enormous gap that has come between the woman and her
husband – not a literal gap (they still share the same bed), but a metaphorical
gap because they are no longer close in their relationship. The very beginning
line of the poem “The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open” reveals
an intense tension between a wife and her drunkard husband. She fights
with her husband and knows that he is having sex with other prostitutes too. This further shows that there were feelings of rage,
frustration, and even fear. The husband is running away from his
marriage problems; he goes to look for sex somewhere else. And Lowell portrays
the wife lamenting at home because her husband is out there looking for
different thrills, "My only though is how to keep alive." In the
line, "What makes him tick, "Lowell brings us (the reader) inside the
poem to make us part of their marriage dispute and invite us to judges for
ourselves. The existence of fear is evident through lines
13-14 “Gored by the climacteric of his want, / he stalls above me like an
elephant.” The comparison of her husband’s behavior with an animal of a great
size shows how much she fears her husband and feels hopeless. Furthermore, this
simile relates to the physical unattractiveness that has emerged from the
ugliness of their sex lives. The use of simile in this poem makes the readers
to create their own personal interpretation of the poem. In addition to this,
as the words change from “us” and “our” in the beginning to “I” and “his” at
the end, readers can feel the gap between the couple because they are no longer
close in their relationship in the sense of genuine, loving feelings for each
other. Although this poem has great feelings of despair and pain, it
realistically describes a relationship that consists lust, anger, and
pain.
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