Submitted by David Havird, Aug 15, 2007 11:43

I read this article with great interest--having read DAY BY DAY right when it came out (and a number of the poems before then, when they appeared in periodicals). And I basically agree with Mr Kirsch's overall assessment. A couple of things: first--and maybe Mr Kirsch implies this in his concluding paragraph--the "negligence" of Lowell's sonnets, which is only sometimes apparent, is even then only apparent--it's willed, which is to say that it's a matter of rhetoric. In fact, Lowell reworked the sonnets assiduously--not merely rearranging them as the books (the three NOTEBOOKs, HISTORY, FOR LIZZIE AND HARRIET, the clusters in the SELECTED POEMS) evolved but also revising individual sonnets. Second, some of the effects that Mr Kirsch discerns in DAY BY DAY--the apparent disconnection between and among the recorded observations (and, I would add, the sometimes epigrammatic style of phrasing)--derive from rhetorical techniques employed in the sonnets, however different in tone the two works may be. And speaking of rhetoric, I wish that Mr Kirsch would clarify this interesting assertion: "Lowell's style, at its best, is a rhetorical style -- that is, he uses language deliberately and artificially to communicate a feeling of power." I would have thought that poetry typically employs language deliberately and artificially to communicate something--is that not right? How often is poetry genuinely spontaneous? But what is this "feeling of power"? Control over recalcitrant elements (whether observations drawn from experience or the elements of language itself)? I ask because Lowell's persona seems vulnerable, powerless--holding, for instance, a "locked razor."

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