I ALREADY KNEW I did not really want to read the recently-published Lowell/Hardwick correspondence, but reading the reviews made me ponder whether to give The Dolphin another shot, and on my way to pulling The Dolphin off the shelf, I noticed this. I picked it up at Magus Books in Seattle back in 2017, having then recently read Kay Redfield Jamison's Setting Fire to the River, but did not immediately read it. But, on an impulse, I decided this was the moment.
By the end of Part One, I decided I liked it as much as Lord Weary's Castle or Life Studies--that is, my favorite Lowell volumes. A little ways into Part Three, I decided I actually liked this more than Lord Weary's Castle or Life Studies. This is my favorite book by Lowell.
Why? Hmm. It seems less strenuous than a lot of Lowell, perhaps. In all his books, especially in the ones I do not much like, he seems to be bending iron all the time, even when he is just making a basket. But not so much here. The poems do not seem careless, but they do seem just a little relaxed, unfussy, in a Samson Agonistes way, perhaps--still Milton, but not with the full panoply of effects, more unforced. Lowell in Day by Day is still lyrical, still full of darting intelligence, occasionally starting into flame, but not sweating with effort quite the same way, willing to let go, to a degree. "Yet why not say what happened?"
So, why had I not read this before?
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