The Old Flame by Robert Lowell | Poems Rethabile Likes
"The Old Flame"
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My old flame, my wife!
Remember our lists of birds?
One morning last summer, I drove
by our house in Maine. It was still
on top of its hill,
Now a red ear of Indian maize
was splashed on the door.
Old Glory with thirteen stripes
hung on a pole. The clapboard
was old-red schoolhouse red.
Inside, a new landlord,
a new wife, a new broom!
Atlantic seaboard antique shop
pewter and plunder
shone in each room.
A new frontier!
No running next door
now to phone the sheriff
for his taxi to Bath
and the State Liquor Store!
No one saw your ghostly
imaginary lover
stare through the window
and tighten
the scarf at his throat.
Health to the new people,
health to their flag, to their old
restored house on the hill!
Everything had been swept bare,
furnished, garnished and aired.
Everything's changed for the best,
how quivering and fierce we were,
there snowbound together,
simmering like wasps
in our tent of books!
Poor ghost, old love, speak
with your old voice
of flaming insight
that kept us awake all night.
In one bed and apart,
we heard the plow
groaning up hill,
a red light, then a blue,
as it tossed off the snow
to the side of the road.
Robert Lowell's The Old Flame is a poem about memory, love, and what it feels like to return to a place that once belonged to you — only to find that everything has changed. Lowell drives past the old house in Maine and notices the new owners, the new paint, the new flag, and all the things that have replaced the life he and his wife once had there. But the past is still alive in his mind: "how quivering and fierce we were, / there snowbound together, / simmering like wasps / in our tent of books!"
One of the things that make the poem so powerful is the way the speaker moves between ordinary details and strong memories. We see the house on the hill, the snowplow struggling up the road, and its red and blue lights in the night. At the same time, we feel the intensity of the relationship he is remembering. The old house has been cleaned up and made new, but the memories haven't disappeared. Who doesn't know what that's like?
The Old Flame was published in 1964, in Lowell's collection For the Union Dead. It comes from the intensely personal side of his poetry, often associated with the confessional movement, spearheaded by him and Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. The title is especially good: the "old flame" is his wife, but it also suggests a love and a memory that are still burning, even after the life they shared has changed.
Please listen to the Spotify track as you read along.
— Rethabile
Robert Lowell reading "The Old Flame"
In this audio track, Robert Lowell reads his poem "The Old Flame," a tender, haunting poem of memory, lost love, and the quiet ache of returning to a place that no longer holds you.
Audio source: Spotify.
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