More than sixty years since publication, it is hard now to see why this book was groundbreaking. It contains many poems and an autobiographical piece of prose. Strangely, the autobiographical piece is what was groundbreaking formally and a few of the poems in the last section of the book are confessional which made the book groundbreaking as to content.
Groundbreaking is of interest at the time something is written. Novelty is always highly praised no matter when it happens. If all a book has is a novelty, then its impact will fade. This happens here with ‘Life Studies’ because now we are much less enamored of ancestral stories about WASPs and tepidly confessional poems concerning mental health are also much less impressive.
Lowell was a good writer and maybe sometimes a great writer but mostly here I see the good writer not a great one.
