Robert Lowell’s Odd Fixation on Jews

The distinguished 20th-century poet Robert Lowell, despite his impeccable-seeming Boston Brahmin pedigree, liked to bring up the fact that he was “one-eighth Jewish.” As Stuart Schoffman details, Lowell in fact had one Jewish great-great grandfather on his father’s side and another on his mother’s side. More immediately, his literary career brought him into regular contact with the many Jews among the New York intellectuals. He once told another writer: “Most of my friends are Jewish, and the people I’ve learned the most from, and that I like best, in New York are Jewish.”