For the Union Dead
First edition
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| Author | Robert Lowell |
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| Cover artist | Frank Parker |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus & Giroux |
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Publication date
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1964 |
For the Union Dead is a book of poems by Robert Lowell that was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1964. It was Lowell's sixth book.
Notable poems from the collection include "Beyond the Alps'" (a revised version of the poem that originally appeared in Lowell's book Life Studies), "Water," "The Old Flame," "The Public Garden" and the title poem, which is one of Lowell's best-known poems.
The poems from For the Union Dead built upon the more personal, looser style that Lowell had established in Life Studies. For instance, some of the poems are written in free verse or with a loose meter, and some contain irregular rhymes or no rhymes at all.
However, although many of the poem in this volume are personal, their subject matter is different from Life Studies since there aren't any poems that focus on the subject of Lowell's mental illness. Instead, the more personal poems here focus on Lowell's close family relationships, centering on individuals like his daughter ("Child's Song"), his cousin Harriet Winslow ("Soft Wood"), his father ("Middle Age"), and his ex-wife ("The Old Flame"). However, since these poems don't involve taboo subject matter, they aren't notably "confessional" (like some of the poems in Life Studies were). The closest that Lowell comes to addressing his mental illness is in the poem "Eye and Tooth" when, in the final line, he writes, "I am tired. Everyone's tired of my turmoil."
Other notable subjects in these poems include Lowell's childhood ("Those Before Us" and "The Neo-Classical Urn"), and he also writes a number of poems about famous historical figures like Caligula (in "Caligula") and Jonathan Edwards (in "Jonathan Edwards in Western Massachusetts")--so multiple subjects of world history are explored in this book (although historical subjects would later become the main focus of his book History, published a few years later).
In comparison with Life Studies, Lowell stated, "For the Union Dead is more mixed [with different kinds of poems] and the poem are separate entities. I'm after invention rather than memory, and I'd like to achieve some music and elegance and splendor, but not in any programmatic sense. Some of the poems may be close to symbolism."
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