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89 The Two Sets of Classes Boston University and Harvard, 1959–1977 There were two sets of classes with Robert Lowell in Boston: the early ones at Boston University and the later ones at Harvard. The Boston University classes were “star turns,” featuring the older, more glamorous poets. In addition to Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and George Starbuck, people who were in those early classes at Boston University , or who visited, included Henry Braun, Helen Chasin, Don Junkins, Richard Lourie, Jean Valentine, Sayre Sheldon, Hugh Seidman, and others. We had heard of the Iowa Writing Workshop. But there was no such workshop in the Northeast where poets could gather and devote themselves to the discipline of poetry. Poetry, it was felt, could not be “taught.” Lowell’s classes were known for the attempt, so poets came from all over to study with him. Members of the class were rarely introduced to visiting poets: it was assumed that we possibly knew them. Afterward Lowell would hastily disappear with them into a distinguished huddle. Along with the women enrolled in his classes, Cal attracted a certain number of older, adoring women who came to audit and watched him raptly. One could speculate on these relationships—and we did. Sometimes these women would be completely silent for an entire term, sometimes they barely dared speak. They all seemed beautiful and mysterious; romantic attachments were imagined. One woman sat at the foot of the class table for months. She glistened with silk and jewels, never gave her name, and spent the semester gazing at Lowell, unblinkingly. There were always women like the thigh-grabber in the original Boston University class, ones who had actually enrolled in the courses. One could always rely on students to provide strange, unthought-of poetry and poetic subjects. One of the more entertaining moments I can remember came from a woman who had written an epic poem about—? Hard to tell. Lowell ran through his “what does this mean?” number—and he was not being deliberately obtuse, as one often suspected, when he did this with a poem and the meaning seemed obvious. Lowell would not let this go. The class struggled with the poem for two hours until the author triumphantly revealed her identity and her subject matter. The poem, it turned out, was about her climbing a huge mountain while in an advanced state • With Robert Lowell & His Circle 90 of pregnancy, standing on the mountaintop with an enormous belly, and then clambering down the other side of the mountain, accompanied by her husband. On the other side of the mountain, conveniently, there was a huge ocean, which our author entered. The poem ended with her giving birth to her child in the pounding surf. “Aha!” we all said. “No wonder we couldn’t get it!” Such “Aha!” experiences happened fairly often, and I must confess to waiting for them; they provided such a relief from the heaviness of the Lowell aura. The author smiled, and Cal was for once speechless. Thirty years later I re-met the poet, Nancy Rice, and although I had trouble remembering her name, her poem sprang, fully etched, from my memory. After moving from Marlborough Street in Boston to New York, Lowell was appointed to teach at Harvard. He commuted to Cambridge to do so, and this signaled the beginning of the second wave of classes and a wave of younger poets who came to study with him. In addition to his Harvard classes, Lowell decided to hold “office hours,” open sessions that poets could attend—working poets—who were not Harvard undergraduates. These office hours were dedicated and intense. Writers such as Frank Bidart, Robert Pinsky, James Atlas, Sidney Goldfarb , Robert Grenier, Lloyd Schwartz, Alan Williamson, and others were part of the later generation of writers who continued to attend, year after year. Some writers from the earlier Boston University classes also showed up. The level of talent and ability of the people who passed through the office hours was amazing: a thoughtful undergraduate, Jonathan Galassi; AndrewWylie;SandyKaye;RogerParhamBrown;RichardTillinghast;Steven Sandy; Geoffrey Movius; Bill Corbett; Sidney Goldfarb; Bill Byrom; a young Texan poet, Barney Holland; Anne Hussey; Arthur Oberg (who died tragically); and others. Among the women were Anne Mazlish, Ruth Hanham, Peggy Rizza, Jane Shore (with her alert gaze that seemed to take in everything), Judith Baumel, Estelle Leonteif, Gail Mazur, Celia Gilbert, and Alice Ryerson (who was later to create the Ragdale Foundation). These talented men and women...

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