Robert Lowell, with Elizabeth Bishop, stands apart as the greatest American poet of the latter half of the twentieth century—and Life Studies and For the Union Dead stand as among his most important volumes. In Life Studies, which was first published in 1959, Lowell moved away from the formality of his earlier poems and started writing in a more confessional vein. The title poem of For the Union Dead concerns the death of the Civil War hero (and Lowell ancestor) Robert Gould Shaw, but it also largely centers on the contrast between Boston's idealistic past and its debased present at the time of its writing, in the early 1960's. Throughout, Lowell addresses contemporaneous subjects in a voice and style that themselves push beyond the accepted forms and constraints of the time.

A Study Guide for Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

The issues addressed in this volume include the limits of language and the need for linguistic form, the significance of creating.

How do twentieth-century artists bring forth the powerful reality of death when it exists in memory and lived experience as something that happens only to others? This volume grapples with this paradox, examining literary texts and performance media that include Amiri Baraka's Dutchman, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, John Edgar Wideman's The Cattle Killing, Toni Morrison's Sula and Song of Solomon, Don DeLillo's White Noise, and HBO's Six Feet Under.

Here are 25,000 quotations drawn from the history, politics, literature, religions, science, and popular culture of the world--ranging from the earliest Chinese sages through Shakespeare to the present day.