Reading Myself

Robert Lowell: He is considered the founder of "confessional poetry" according to wikepedia.





"earned my grass" - maybe speaking of "earning his spot" or earning his land.


This poem has two stanzas, the first stanza has 7 lines and the second stanza has 8 lines.


I would say this poem is more like a ballad. Even though this poem is only 15 lines short it is still able to tell a story or memory. There is no rhyme scheme to this poem but in the second stanza there is repeated words such as "cell, circle, and honey" I think the author uses this repition to create a better understanding of the world he is proud of. Every single piece of life was doen with perfect calculations due to other parts of nature.


"Somehow never wrote something to go back to."- this line seemed to be the poets way of trying to make sense of his own poem. The poem sounds like a reflective piece, but that line in particular seemed to stand out, almost like it didn't fit in with the rest of the poem. Some of the sonnets we read in class by Shakespeare were Shakespeares way of putting his opinion about plays in his own play. Maybe this is Lowell's way of writing in his own opinion about writing.

The picture above is Parnassus, which gave me a better visual of why someone would take pride in the mountain's slopes. The beauty of the mountain and the height resemble the struggles in Lowell's life and how to overcome the struggles you can make it to the top, and earn the mountain peaks.

The tone in this poem is very built up because it is slow and then by the second stanza there is more background information and reasoning behind his story. "...my coffin"- this is a different way to end a poem because it's not very bright and happy. The poem is a bit meloncholy.

The poet also relates his life to the life of an insect.