Ceiling Design - Contemporary Jewish Museum - San Francisco
Photo by Pam Pitt
Photo by Pam Pitt
POETRY -
A New Day
Life Study
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But tell me who thou art
That in so doleful place are put. Dante, Inferno, canto vi |
On my first day as a psych aide
at McLean's Psychiatric Hospital,
in Belmont, Massachusetts,
I was encouraged just to walk around,
familiarize myself with the layout,
ake the rounds, introduce myself--
try to make a connection.
Rebuffed by lack of interest
on the part of those I approached,
for my first contact I settled on
the man who sat in the dayroom,
chainsmoking, lighting one after another,
ashes spilling down the front
of his loosely tied gown,
onto the floor at his feet,
who appeared quite absorbed
in the book that he held,
taking no notice of the noise
and bustle going on around him.
He looked older than most here,
middle-aged, unshaven, his hair
tangled, uncombed,
his horn-rimmed glasses
gave him a studious air.
But I sensed an inner grace,
a solidity, in spite of his outer disarray.
He looked up from his page
at my approach with some
puzzlement, maybe curiosity,
at my interruption of his reading.
“I see you're reading Robert Lowell,
do you like Lowell?” He lowered his book,
and turned his haggard face toward me,
eyes slightly magnified in the lenses
of his glasses, “I am Robert Lowell!”
I retreated from the dayroom
to the staff office, laughing inwardly:
“Oh man, this guy's really delusional!”
He thinks he's Robert Lowell!
at McLean's Psychiatric Hospital,
in Belmont, Massachusetts,
I was encouraged just to walk around,
familiarize myself with the layout,
ake the rounds, introduce myself--
try to make a connection.
Rebuffed by lack of interest
on the part of those I approached,
for my first contact I settled on
the man who sat in the dayroom,
chainsmoking, lighting one after another,
ashes spilling down the front
of his loosely tied gown,
onto the floor at his feet,
who appeared quite absorbed
in the book that he held,
taking no notice of the noise
and bustle going on around him.
He looked older than most here,
middle-aged, unshaven, his hair
tangled, uncombed,
his horn-rimmed glasses
gave him a studious air.
But I sensed an inner grace,
a solidity, in spite of his outer disarray.
He looked up from his page
at my approach with some
puzzlement, maybe curiosity,
at my interruption of his reading.
“I see you're reading Robert Lowell,
do you like Lowell?” He lowered his book,
and turned his haggard face toward me,
eyes slightly magnified in the lenses
of his glasses, “I am Robert Lowell!”
I retreated from the dayroom
to the staff office, laughing inwardly:
“Oh man, this guy's really delusional!”
He thinks he's Robert Lowell!
2.
That's how I've always told that story,
maybe now I could tell it a different way--
how I, a twenty-something college
drop-out, wound up here, and how
I even knew who Robert Lowell was.
I, a common draft-dodger, when called up
in Boston, became a draft-resistor
and chose to work in McLean's, 4-F.
Of course I knew of the time, you,
Robert Lowell, spent as a CO during WWII,
a Catholic convert, living witness
to the principal beatitude,
“blessed are the peacemakers,”
which, filtered through your peculiar
pathology, you took literally.
Your conversion was itself an act
of rebellion, smashing up against
a dynastic Protestant rock
on the cold stony Atlantic coast.
“I myself am hell.” Your calling was to
expose the skeletons left far back
in America's deepest, darkest closets.
(Tell it to the Cabots, and they'll tell it to God!)
In one of your most anthologized poems,
driving your old Ford in a fog,
you declared “my mind's not right”
opening yourself and poetry itself
to the openly confessional.
You resisted this latest war,
protesting at the Pentagon
in the company of Mailer and Chomsky,
you turned down LBJ's invitation
to the White House because of the war,
and for that gained a young audience
most of whom had never read a word
you wrote, it didn't matter,
you became a hero to the movement,
a member of the ruling generation
—Robert fucking Lowell—
of the old money Lowells,
betraying his class for peace!
Why were you on Bowditch,
the acute, locked unit,
always admitted there when you made
your many returns to McLean's?
It was always your choice to be there,
when you were able to choose.
The Director was your personal friend,
both of you on the Harvard payroll,
who would do his best always
to accommodate you.
The disturbed young men
for whom you were adviser,
comforter, patient listener,
though they didn't know you
as the poet who had changed American poetry,
they did know your politics,
and took you to be a political prisoner,
holding you, therefore, in great respect.
I had made my connection at last,
when we sat in your room,
and you guided me through the dark wood
of Dante's cantos, explaining how
your translations made them “ring right.”
These you called “Imitations,”
something you picked up
from that Virgil of yours in St. Elizabeth's
where you paid your respects
to the greater fabricator
in whose shadow you labored through
the cycles of your bipolar disorder,
the inevitable plunge from the heights
where you beheld the starry paradise,
always just out of reach,
which, in the end, even Pound himself
realized was only to be found
in that which we love, on earth,
despite hell, or it is nowhere.
You wrote on the flyleaf
of my copy of Near The Ocean,
“To Steve, Together in McLean's, Robert Lowell,”
remarking to your wife,
Elizabeth Hardwick,
with some wonderment:
“He bought my book.”
For a brief moment in time,
in this our profane comedy,
our two lifelines converged
against the turbulent background of sixties dissent,
and I walked with you a little way
on your infernal journey through
the corridors of this madhouse.
maybe now I could tell it a different way--
how I, a twenty-something college
drop-out, wound up here, and how
I even knew who Robert Lowell was.
I, a common draft-dodger, when called up
in Boston, became a draft-resistor
and chose to work in McLean's, 4-F.
Of course I knew of the time, you,
Robert Lowell, spent as a CO during WWII,
a Catholic convert, living witness
to the principal beatitude,
“blessed are the peacemakers,”
which, filtered through your peculiar
pathology, you took literally.
Your conversion was itself an act
of rebellion, smashing up against
a dynastic Protestant rock
on the cold stony Atlantic coast.
“I myself am hell.” Your calling was to
expose the skeletons left far back
in America's deepest, darkest closets.
(Tell it to the Cabots, and they'll tell it to God!)
In one of your most anthologized poems,
driving your old Ford in a fog,
you declared “my mind's not right”
opening yourself and poetry itself
to the openly confessional.
You resisted this latest war,
protesting at the Pentagon
in the company of Mailer and Chomsky,
you turned down LBJ's invitation
to the White House because of the war,
and for that gained a young audience
most of whom had never read a word
you wrote, it didn't matter,
you became a hero to the movement,
a member of the ruling generation
—Robert fucking Lowell—
of the old money Lowells,
betraying his class for peace!
Why were you on Bowditch,
the acute, locked unit,
always admitted there when you made
your many returns to McLean's?
It was always your choice to be there,
when you were able to choose.
The Director was your personal friend,
both of you on the Harvard payroll,
who would do his best always
to accommodate you.
The disturbed young men
for whom you were adviser,
comforter, patient listener,
though they didn't know you
as the poet who had changed American poetry,
they did know your politics,
and took you to be a political prisoner,
holding you, therefore, in great respect.
I had made my connection at last,
when we sat in your room,
and you guided me through the dark wood
of Dante's cantos, explaining how
your translations made them “ring right.”
These you called “Imitations,”
something you picked up
from that Virgil of yours in St. Elizabeth's
where you paid your respects
to the greater fabricator
in whose shadow you labored through
the cycles of your bipolar disorder,
the inevitable plunge from the heights
where you beheld the starry paradise,
always just out of reach,
which, in the end, even Pound himself
realized was only to be found
in that which we love, on earth,
despite hell, or it is nowhere.
You wrote on the flyleaf
of my copy of Near The Ocean,
“To Steve, Together in McLean's, Robert Lowell,”
remarking to your wife,
Elizabeth Hardwick,
with some wonderment:
“He bought my book.”
For a brief moment in time,
in this our profane comedy,
our two lifelines converged
against the turbulent background of sixties dissent,
and I walked with you a little way
on your infernal journey through
the corridors of this madhouse.
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