{"id":76573,"date":"2014-09-10T15:22:10","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T19:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=76573"},"modified":"2014-09-10T17:05:11","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T21:05:11","slug":"robert-lowells-epilogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/10\/robert-lowells-epilogue\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Lowell\u2019s \u201cEpilogue\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Robert-lowell-by-elsa-dorfman\"<\/a>

Photo: Elsa Dorfman<\/p><\/div>\n

If you write, and you are not a journalist, and you don\u2019t write fiction, people want to know why. These are hard questions to answer. Sometimes one admires fiction too much to attempt it. Sometimes one lacks the gift for invention. No one gets at the particular challenges of the fact\/fiction relationship\u2014or indeed, the exigencies of the creative process\u2014better than Robert Lowell. Especially the poem \u201cEpilogue.\u201d Lowell\u2019s work may be a monument to unapologetic narcissism (an artistically necessary narcissism, defenders could say, or at the very least indivisible from either his genius or his illness) but here, it seems to me, there is only enough self to propel the project at hand. If you listen to him read it<\/a>, he sounds downright humbled by the weight of creative challenge. As a friend pointed out, it is interesting that his stepdaughter should title her memoir\u2014so full of his destructive recklessness\u2014Why Not Say What Happened?<\/em> After all, this poem is more introspective, less destructive, than so many others. That is for her to say, of course. In a way, it\u2019s the best memoir title in the world. <\/p>\n

\n

Those bless\u00e8d structures, plot and rhyme\u2014
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter\u2019s vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
<\/em>But sometimes everything I write\u00a0\u00a0
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All\u2019s misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun\u2019s illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you write, and you are not a journalist, and you don\u2019t write fiction, people want to know why. These are hard questions to answer. Sometimes one admires fiction too much to attempt it. Sometimes one lacks the gift for invention. No one gets at the particular challenges of the fact\/fiction relationship\u2014or indeed, the exigencies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[15256,7221,630],"class_list":["post-76573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-epilogue","tag-poems","tag-robert-lowell"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRobert Lowell\u2019s \u201cEpilogue\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on the challenges of the fact\/fiction relationship and the exigencies of the creative process.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/10\/robert-lowells-epilogue\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Robert Lowell\u2019s \u201cEpilogue\u201d by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"September 10, 2014 \u2013 If you write, and you are not a journalist, and you don\u2019t write fiction, people want to know why. 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