American Literature / Unit 17 AML 1605 short lesson, about 20 seconds
"Skunk Hour" and "For the Union Dead"
Captions available
The idea
The anchor says "Skunk Hour," from Life Studies, was prompted by Elizabeth Bishop's "The Armadillo," and that Lowell declares in it, as no American writer had before, that his mind is not right. For the Union Dead, of nineteen sixty-four, continued the autobiographical work.
In practice
A poem that admits the speaker's illness.
Where people slip
Many of his poems set private against public history.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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