I've avoided recording anything in my apartment (which means anything for the blog, period), because doing that would mean I would have to turn the air-conditioner off, and it is so hot in Tennessee these days (heat indexes of 107+) that NOTHING makes me want to do that. But I wanted to record this Lowell poem, and so I was trying to figure out if there was a justification for why there should be the sound of an air-conditioner in the background of a poem so obviously set in New England. I couldn't, so I turned the AC off.

But I did learn something interesting recently--the song Lowell hears in the poem with lyrics "Love, O careless Love"--I don't know who is supposed to be singing because like a bagillion people have covered it, but--the melody comes from a traditional folk song the "Father of the Blues" W.C. Handy immortalized. Handy certainly spent a lot of time kicking around Tennessee, and he's the reason Beale Street is called Beale Street (before he wrote "Beale Street Blues" the street, like all the roads running parallel to it downtown--Union, Madison, etc.--was named Beale Ave.).

Handy liked the melody and, the story goes, he was in New York City one day when he heard a preacher say that everything was adulterated. (I can't even IMAGINE why anyone would think that in New York) anyway, Handy heard this and thought--and love, too. So he wrote some lyrics to the melody that went 'Love, O loveless Love." There's more about that, including all Handy's lyrics here.

What I like so much about this poem--Other than, obviously, "I myself am hell," which, if I were writing History would go down as one of the BEST LINES EVER. Is how all the conflict seems to be taking place just below the surface of things. The "red" stain on a hill--there's no reason that should be upsetting, except, the hill is called "Blue Hill." Love, O loveless Love. Everything is adulterated.

Anyway, for obvious reasons, one could read this as a very depressing, if musical, poem. But I think the end is encouraging: as scary as Lowell seems to think he is, I myself am hell the mother skunk clearly isn't scared of him. Which tells me he really isn't that scary at all. He may be a symptom of the sick season, but he's not the disease.

Lowell dedicated this poem to his good friend and fellow poet Elizabeth Bishop, who also dedicated poems to him. To read one of hers go here. Anyway, at some point Bishop told Lowell she thought his work was immoral (at the time Lowell was writing sonnets by ripping from letters his broken-hearted wife (he'd left) and daughter (again, he'd left) were writing to him). And I'm gonna side with Bishop on that one, I think it was immoral. But I don't think Lowell would have dedicated a poem to Bishop if the big takeaway was "I myself am hell." Friends don't let friends drive drunk, and they don't dedicate nasty poems to one another. In Lowell's "confessional" poetry, because a "confessional poet" is how most people think of him--think how constricting it must be NOT to make things up, no wonder he was depressed, and ripping other people's letters! When the material is finite, you have to use what you got--anyways, in Lowell's poetry what's going on inside him "my mind's not right" usually reflects what is going on outside, too--the whole season is ill. And if the skunk isn't scared of Lowell, that means there's hope for him, and hope for everything else, too.