Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

The Lowells

Aaron Smith and James Allen Hall Season 4 Episode 19

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0:00 | 24:26

The queens visit The Lowells in a game of "Amy Robert Lowell"


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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 


 Notes:

Watch a brief biographical video about Amy Lowell here


Poems we mention include these by Amy Lowell:

"Sword Blades and Poppy Seed"

"Opal"

"The Letter"

"A Winter Ride" (which includes the line "Everything mortal has moments immortal"; the poem appeared in her first book, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass [Houghton Mifflin, 1912]).

"A Decade"

"September, 1918" (which we discuss at length)

And these by Robert Lowell:

"Night Sweat"

"Home After Three Months Away"

"The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket" which includes the line "The Lord survives the rainbow of his will."

"Reading Myself"


Watch a longer documentary about Robert Lowell here (~60 min).

Here's the music video for Chappell Roan's "Casual"

Here's an article about Amy and Robert Lowell that's worth reading. 

Here's a link to "Amy Lowell: Selected Poems" edited by Honor Moore; watch Moore discuss Lowell here (~60 min).

Watch Naomi Shihab Nye read Amy Lowell's "The Garden by Moonlight."

Watch Kids Magazine TV 


A bit about hyphenated use of words like "to-day" vs "today." In Old and in Middle English, the practice was to join the time with the preposition, using a hyphen "to-day," and "to-morrow," and "to-night," for instance. As the sense of their use as single notions developed, the two elements were brought together in written language (i.e., to night, to-night, and tonight). Nineteenth-century dictionaries opted for the hyphen in all three words. The OED shows hyphenated examples throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th. Latest examples are of to-day (1912), to-night (1908), and to-morrow (1927, with a possible further example as late as 1959). (Adapted from this article).