Fall 1961 - Robert Lowell Context Flashcards
Examine the context of the poem
• For Lowell the growing tension between the USA and the Soviet Union signalled a terror which could not be fathomed by the mind. A glass bell may provide temporary air with its apparent view of the sea, but like all objects the glass would crack with pressure.
• A new President, John F. Kennedy, and an old Communist, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, played a dangerous game of Russian chess or Russian roulette
o Adding to the mix was the new leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro, who decided to toss his fate with the Soviet east winds.
o The growing tension in Berlin was like an off Broadway play waiting for its chance to play in theatre row
o A small country, South Vietnam, which most people never heard of, was being stocked with young boys and men for a conflict of wills
o It would leave a bloody wound for years to come and many mourners for those youth who paid for the drama with their precious blood
o For Robert Lowell the world was a boiling cauldron with a tight lid. The fires under the pot were stoked with great fury by the two greatest nations on earth
Explain the imagery of ‘Fall 1961’
• For a child a grandfather clock is a majestic tower. Its precise movements and intricate pieces stir the imagination with flights of fantasy—childhood lore of mystical lands
o For adults the “tock, tock, tock” is a constant reminder that time is proceeding. There’s nothing that can be done to delay or hasten the hands on the grandfather clock.
o Autumn is a prelude to winter. Nuclear war would have ushered in a nuclear winter from which few would have survived.
o Extinction of a species is always a tragic occurrence on this planet traversing the cosmos. Unlike animals humans can ponder, plan and carry out mass destruction.
o Like the minnow looking out of the studio glass life rushes on. Like a minnow many humans feel like fishing bait dangling on a hook as they are tossed out into the sea to be the lure of destruction for the unsuspecting fellow just looking for lunch.
Explain the meaning of the poem’s imagery
• A father’s instinct is to provide and protect his children. A nuclear blast and fallout offered a paradigm shift in which protection was an illusion, a deadly fallacy.
o The reality of the hopelessness of protection caused parents to huddle like arthropods. In private they had cried their river of tears, but they reached a point where the tear wells of the souls were as dry as the Sahara.
o The natural cycles continued as humans played games of extinction. For the fauna of earth a ticking clock holds no meaning in their world view. Only humans are governed by hands on a face. When the moving hand stalls, time continues as the human face worries about the eventuality of death.
• Orioles are beautiful, shy, and avoid public appearances as much as possible, but their vocal choruses are discordant and irritating
o We return to the grandfather clock which has continued its time march as we wandered in the dark shadows of a world gone mad with the power of creation.
