The Swiss Alps
In the first poem of Lowell's much-celebrated collection Life Studies (1959), the poet describes a journey through the Swiss Alps. With his typically inventive and beautiful language, Lowell writes of a "Paris pullman lunge / mooning across the fallow Alpine snow," and remarks that "Everest was still / unscaled." Lowell is so moved by the scene that he claims that "life changed to landscape." Shortly thereafter, however, Lowell digresses, and begins to speak on a variety of subjects, including his "grandparents on their grand tours," "the crowds at San Pietro" in the Vatican, as well as references to Greek mythology. While the poem may seem disjointed, and hard to follow, it is brought together by the precise and detailed descriptions of the Alps through which Lowell travels. It can be postulated that the incredible beauty of the gargantuan mountains is what prompts Lowell to think and write about such a wide variety of topics.
Nantucket
Lowell was born and raised in the New England region of the Northeast United States of America. The maritime regions of states such as Maine and Massachusetts frequently recur throughout his work, including in the poem "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket." The poem was included in Lowell's Pulitzer prize-winning collection Lord Weary's Castle (1946), and features some of the most vivid imagery in all of Lowell's work. In the poem, which is set on Nantucket Island in Massachussets, describes "a brackish reach of shoal" where "the sea was still breaking violently." Lowell then describes a fisherman that has drowned in the waters. According to the poet, his "corpse was bloodless, a blotch of reds and whites." The imagery is sharp and troubling, and is incredibly effective at portraying just how harsh the coastal environment of New England could be.
Father's Bedroom
In another acclaimed poem from Life Studies (1959), titled "Father's Bedroom," Lowell describes, as the title suggests, his father's bedroom. The imagery is meticulous and exacting, with "blue threads / as thin as pen-writing on the bedspread" and a "clear glass bed-lamp / with a white doily shade." As the poem progresses, it becomes evident that the speaker's father has died, and that the act of describing the room is a means by which to remember and memorialize the father.
Boston
In the titular poem of For the Union Dead, Lowell describes his hometown of Boston, Massachusetts. He begins by describing "the old South Boston Aquarium [which] stands / in a Sahara of snow now." It has fallen into a state of disrepair and "its broken windows are boarded." Lowell depicts the city as one that is both stuck in the past but also modern. For example, he mentions "parking spaces [that] luxuriate like civic / sandpiles in the heart of Boston" but also that "the stone statues of the abstract Union Solider / grow slimmer and younger each year." In this sense, the city is both stuck in the past of the Civil War, but also exist in the contemporary world. As Lowell's depiction suggests, this dichotomy results in a confusing and dilapidated urban environment.
