"He was formal in a rather awkward New England sense. His voice was soft and slow as he read the students' poems. At first I felt the impatient desire to interrupt his slow, line-by-line readings. He would read the first line, stop, and then discuss it at length. I wanted to go through the whole poem quickly and then go back. I couldn't see any merit in dragging through it until you almost hated the damned thing, even your own poems, especially your own. At that point, I wrote to Snodgrass about my impatience, and his reply went this way, "Frankly, I used to nod my head at his every statement, and he taught me more than a whole gang of scholars could." So I kept my mouth shut, and Snodgrass was right. Robert Lowell's method of teaching is intuitive and open. After he had read a student's poem, he would read another evoked by it. Comparison was often painful. He worked with a cold chisel, with no more mercy than a dentist. He got out the decay, but if he was never kind to the poem, he was kind to the poet."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Anne Sexton interview with The Paris Review (1971)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Lowell
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell, IV (March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet.
4 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Robert Lowell →
Related Quotes
"A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket-- The sea was still breaking violently and night Had steamed into our North Atl…"
"Once fishing was a rabbit's foot-- O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot, Let suns stay in or suns step out: Life danced …"
"I loved his openness to receive influences. He was not a poet who said, "I'm an American poet, I'm going to be peculi…"
"If Youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can th…"
"If you would only stop rating a child's ability by your own; and try to find out just what ability a child has, our y…"
"Though it was long thought that woman's brain was minor in comparison with man's, woman, as a class, now-a-day shows …"
"Oh, what a lot of politically blind city and town officials I could point out within a day's auto trip from Branton H…"
"In this country, two things stand first in rank: your flag and your mail. You all know what honor you pay to your fla…"
"It is curious why anybody should pooh-pooh a study of fossils or various forms of rocks or lava. Such things grant us…"
"Isn't it surprising what an array of things a woman can drag forth, burrowing into attics, rooms and nooks! Things lo…"