Connotations Vol. 22.1 (2012/2013) Poetics and Politics in Robert Lowell’s “The March 1” and “The March 2” * FRANK J. KEARFUL Typographical ellipsis, diverse forms of repetition, an array of rhetori- cal devices, sonnet configuration, and prosodic maneuvers are salient features of Lowell’s poetics that deserve close attention in any consid- eration of the political workings of “The March 1” and “The March 2.” So does Lowell’s self-representation, which he spoke of in a 1969 interview, casually linking himself with Horace. He was the most classically oriented American poet of his generation, and Horace will help in my discussion of the truthfulness, biographical or otherwise, of his rhetorical poetics. 1 Lowell was also the most historically mind- ed, and his quatorzains call for the sort of historical contextualization that I provide. To highlight his rhetorical strategies I will draw on the classical rhetorical terminology that he was conversant with. In a 1971 interview, he linked his rhetorical practice with his adoption of sonnet form in Notebook (1970), which comprises over three hundred quator- zains, among them “The March 1” and “The March 2.” He declares that “unrhymed loose blank-verse sonnets […] allowed me rhetoric, formal construction, and quick breaks. […] It was a stanza, as so much of my work—a unit blocked out a priori, then coaxed into form” (Lowell, Collected Prose 270-71). The formal construction that Lowell coaxed his quatorzains into is, I will argue, a variant of Petrarchan sonnet form, sans rhyme scheme but with a rhetorical turn or “quick break” at line 9. Poetics and politics converge crucially toward the close of “The March 2,” when verbal repetition, apostrophe, and *For debates inspired by this article, please check the Connotations website at <http://www.connotations.de/debkearful0221.htm>. Connotations - A Journal for Critical Debate by the Connotations Society is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.