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In his exploratory study of modern American poets, economist David Galenson limited his analysis to 11 outstanding innovators who averaged  more than three poems per anthology. Of the 11, six were finders and five were seekers -- experimental poets tending to do their most important work later in their careers. That was the career pattern for all five: Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Each of the five was also known for detailed observations. In the case of Williams, Moore and Bishop, they focused sharply on the world around them. Lowell and Stevens put more emphasis on the relationship between their interior life and their observations. Like many seekers, most of the five struggled to finish poems or frequently revised previously completed works.
Robert Lowell, 1917-1977: historical and autobiographical observer
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The other No. 1 poem, by confessional observer-improviser Robert Lowell
At age 41, Lowell wrote his most frequently reprinted poem, the eight-stanza “Skunk Hour,” which tied “Prufrock” for the No. 1 in the list of most frequently anthologized works.. Lowell first wrote four “confessional” stanzas about himself -- a secular version of a “dark night of the soul,” he said. Later he added four introductory stanzas about the people and landscape around him – a “sad prospect” that he said he described with “a tone of tolerance, humor, and randomness.” This excerpt comes at the beginning of the second section.
Skunk Hour
…
One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull,
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind's not right.
A car radio bleats,
'Love, O careless Love . . . .' I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat . . . .
I myself am hell,
nobody's here --
only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
…
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Beset by personal troubles, New England poet Robert Lowell achieved successes as a young man, but the impact of his work deepened when he reached middle age and turned his poetic attention more intensely on his own life.
The result was a new type of verse that came to be called “confessional poetry.” But even as his poetry became more personal, it was still founded on observation -- of himself, of history and what was occurring around him.
“Unlike so many contemporary poets, Lowell never wrote poetry about poetry,” said critic Charles McGrath. As poet Donald Hall described the transition: “Lowell was not the first poet to undertake great change in mid-career, but he was the best poet to change so much.”
Like many other experimental innovators, Lowell continually reworked his earlier poems. Elizabeth Bishop, who complained that he compulsively revised his work, noted sadly in her memorial poem to Lowell that finally “You can’t derange, or re-arrange, / your poems again.”
Like many other experimental poets, Lowell tended to be improvisational in his writing, rather than planning it carefully.
The structure of his poems was fairly loose, especially in his later works.
Like many experimental innovators, Lowell was uncertain about the quality of his creations: After his landmark Life Studies won National Book Award, he wrote, “When I finished Life Studies I was left hanging on a question mark. ... I don’t know whether it is a death-rope or a life-line.”
Lowell has two poems in the top 20. As is typical for an experimental poet, they were both written when his career was well under way. His “Skunk Hour,” from age 41, is tied with T.S. Eliot’s “Prufrock” for the No. 1 position, just ahead of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods,” at No. 3. Also on the Top 20 list is “For the Union Dead,” from age 42.
Overall, Lowell’s poems in anthologies include 17 percent that he wrote in his twenties and only two percent from his thirties. In his forties, Lowell shifted focus and hit his stride, composing 56 percent of his poems that appear in anthologies. He continued to produce successful work in later years, with 19 percent from his fifties and six percent from his sixties.
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