Loving Robert Lowell

April 24, 2017
Poet, documentarian, and novelist (Playing Tahoe) Hochman shares the riveting details of her affair with Pulitzer-winning poet Robert Lowell in this intoxicating slice of memoir. In 1961, both poets were leaving failing marriages when they met at the Russian Tea Room in New York City. In Hochman’s own words, “It was as if a bolt of lightning had hit him and me at the same time.” The two fell madly in love and embarked on a passionate relationship that included impromptu poetry readings on the Brooklyn Bridge and elbow rubbing with the literati. Before long, the pair were talking about marriage. Life seemed idyllic until a disastrous dinner with Lowell’s friends, literary power couple Barbara and Jason Epstein, followed by an accusation-filled exchange with a friend of Hochman’s. A joyous engagement party turned violent unearthed a secret that ended Hochman and Lowell’s romance. Hochman’s narrative is punctuated with moving poems written by her at the time and a transcript of an insightful letter Lowell wrote on being a conscientious objector. She superbly captures Lowell’s effusive personality, which is palpable throughout this engaging glimpse into the private life of a famed poet.

Aside from a tendency to mispronounce Hebrew and Yiddish words, Dawn Harvey does a mostly fine job of narrating this memoir. The text, however, seems hurriedly written and poorly edited. While we learn much that we may not have known about the author's life, there is little about the great mid-twentieth-century poet Lowell that will be new to anyone who has read a biography. Harvey does what she can with the rambling text, but she's limited by the insistent dropping of famous names and excessive explanations. (Anyone interested in Robert Lowell, for example, will not need to be told that Ezra Pound was a poet.) Author and narrator might both have been better off with a considered memoir of Hochman's apparently interesting life. D.M.H. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine