62 Quotes by Robert Lowell

It's a completely powerful and serious book, as good as anything in prose or poetry written by a 'beat' writer, and one of the most alive books written by any American for years. I don't see how it could be considered immoral.

Talking about the past is like a cat's trying to explain climbing down a ladder,

I will catch Christ with a greased worm, And when the Prince of Darkness stalks My bloodstream to its Stygian term . . . On water the Man-Fisher walks.

But sometimes everything I write with the threadbare art of my eye seems a snapshot

Wallowing in this bloody sty, I cast for fish that pleased my eye

the scythers, Time and Death, Helmed locusts, move upon the tree of breath

September twenty-second, Sir, the bough cracks with unpicked apples, and at dawn the small-mouth bass breaks water, gorged with spawn.

I myself am hell; nobody's here

Once fishing was a rabbit's foot-- O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot