For the union dead

‘When I die,’ Robert Lowell told me, three days before he did die, in 1977, at the age of 60, ‘Elizabeth’s shares will rise and mine will fall. But mine will come back.’ Elizabeth, in this context, was Elizabeth Bishop, who with Randall Jarrell was Lowell’s correspondent and best friend in the art. His temperament at once generous and competitive, Lowell’s prediction was right. Thirty or more years ago he was by some margin the most celebrated poet in the English-speaking world. A blurry impression of his features by Sidney Nolan even appeared on the cover of Time. Today, he seems to be treated as an Old Master, a museum piece.

Contemporary poets are no longer ambitious in the Lowell way. They do not try to take on Virgil or Dante, Milton or Wordsworth. A few bruisers remain: Seamus Heaney from Ireland, Derek Walcott from St Lucia, Les Murray from Australia. John Ashbery, ten years younger than Lowell, is a prolific New Yorker. He does not tackle the tradition of English verse in its variety; he does Ashbery. Geoffrey Hill is our own big hitter. The young, writers in and below their 40s, follow Bishop in the way of presenting and examining slivers of occasion. In the last few years I have listened to more than one discussion among his publishers as to how they might ‘bring back’ Lowell once again.

Was it a good idea to let a Collected Poems lie so long? Will the literal as well as spiritual weight of this volume allow the shares to rise? Though mercifully well-printed, typeface nice and big, you would not want to heft this 1,186 pages about on holiday. And there is always something sad about a big collection; it too seems a museum, a mausoleum. When I picked up the book, Lowell died again for me.