Robert Lowell
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"Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV" was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the Mayflower. His family, past and present, were important subjects in his poetry. Growing up in Boston also informed his poems, which were frequently set in Boston and the New England region. The literary scholar Paula Hayes believes that Lowell mythologized New England, particularly in his early work.

Lowell stated, "The poets who most directly influenced me ... were Allen Tate, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Carlos Williams. An unlikely combination! ... but you can see that Bishop is a sort of bridge between Tate's formalism and Williams's informal art." Lowell was capable of writing both formal, metered verse as well as free verse; his verse in some poems from Life Studies and Notebook fell somewhere in between metered and free verse.

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I saw the spiders marching through the air,Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed dayIn latter August when the hayCame creaking to the barn.

If youth is a defect, it is one we outgrow too soon.

It is almost never possible to do pre-licensing studies that are large enough to find very rare events with great certainty, ... We have to find the correct balance between safety and making new preventive tools -- such as vaccines -- at a cost our society can afford.

Is getting well ever an art/ Or art a way to get well.

It's the light of the oncoming train.

The Lord survives the rainbow of His will.

This is death / To die and know it. This is the Black Widow, death.

If we see light at the end of the tunnel, it the light of the oncoming train.

[Next, I looked up Elizabeth Bishop's poem] North Haven, ... The caftan in clear red silk with a richness of eyelet embroidery at outstretched sleeve. Did someone say party?