"Epilogue" by Robert Lowell (poetry reading)

Called "Epilogue" because this was the last poem in the book, and his mission statement as a confessional poet - the word confessional was first applied to Lowell - and defines his dilemma too.

(Why Lowell is called the first confessional poet I have no idea. What about Catullus and Ovid?)

Truth and Art are a misalliance an unhappy marriage.

Do you say what is true or what you wish to be true? Do you have a choice? Even a snapshot is contrived.

Most Art is a fraud, somewhat like advertising, created to sell a product which needs a sales pitch. The rhythm and metre of poems, like advertising jingles, bypass the conscious mind and embed themselves beneath it. What seem to be beautiful truths are in fact beautiful lies. Beautiful truths don't need advertising. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty", pitched John Keats, knowing all too well that beauty is false and truth is ugly.

The painting referred to is "Girl Interrupted at Her Music" by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675. It looks strangely like a snapshot.

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Entertainment

Tags:

• Epilogue
• Robert
• Lowell
• Confessional
• Poetry
• poem

[ceciliarennie]

All art is a beautiful lie, (even your beautiful reading of "Epilogue") but no less deceitful than a sunset or a tiger. Maybe it's a question of appreciating "the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived" as one of O.Wilde's characters say.

[SpokenVerse]

"You smiled, you spoke, and I believed,

By every word and smile deceived.

Another man would hope no more;

Nor hope I what I hoped before:

But let not this last wish be vain;

Deceive, deceive me once again! "

....Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)

[ejcurtis100]

Stunning reading - thank you! Just beginning to explore Robert Lowell...

[kevinherbert]

" We are poor passing facts '...words also spoken by Bomber Thompson after a disastrous 2nd quarter at Kardinia Park