Lord Weary's Castle: The Mills of the Kavanaughs Book

One of the best modern American poetry books

***** A Five Star Poetry Book: Recommended for All Readers

Though admittedly he had an intermittent connection with the academic world, for me Robert Lowell is perhaps the last recognized major American poet outside of the Beats who was really a poet rather than a verse-writing professor. This collection is excellent both in itself and as an introduction to Lowell's poetry. Anyone who is seriously interested in modern American poetry will know about Lowell and probably has this book; I'd recommend it especially to readers looking to expand their acquaintance with modern poetry but who have been discouraged by how stale, flat, and unprofitable almost all verse being cranked out by the academic poetry establishment is nowadays.

Lowell's work is not free of modernist obscurity, but it's always rich and meaty, with strong imagery and a mastery of traditional sound technique which makes his poems attractive on first reading even if you can't always immediately see what's going on. If you're new to Lowell, try looking poems like Falling Asleep Over the Aeneid, The Ghost, or As A Plane Tree By The Water to see Lowell at his most immediately attractive. If you like those pieces, you'll enjoy the rest of the book.