-This symptom can be seen in the poem Home After Three Months Away with specific reference to the shaving razor that Lowell describes in the poem. He writes:
[my daughter][...]
floats my shaving brush
and washcloth in the flush...
Dearest I cannot loiter here
in lather like a polar bear.
Lowell makes this reference in relation to his former poem Waiting In the Blue in which he builds up his poem to the final line:
each of us holds a locked razor.
Whatever trauma Lowell was experiencing, it caused him to check himself into the psychiatric hospital and every time he sees a razor he is reminded of the time he spent there and the reasons and events which drove him there. So to avoid associating with these memories of grief or guilt or whatever else it may be, Lowell avoids contact with razor blades and furthermore, the actual act of shaving.
-This, I will say is perhaps one of the most telling symptoms that I think Lowell exhibits. Every time he makes reference to anyone, it is always through a side-channel or a kind of indirect relation. He describes his mother by observing her belongings which inhabit her room. He describes his granparents by describing the house they lived in and he describes his father through his career in the navy. And he then uses this description to connect to his daughter, using the same description he uses to describe his father's naval uniform and using almost the exact same description to describe his daughter's apparel. So in order to avoid reminiscing about his childhood, Lowell focuses on external objects (inanimate objects) rather than direct objects (his family).
-This symptom can be seen in Lowell's poem "To Speak of Woe That is Marriage". Within this poem, Lowell is self-critical in describing how he thinks his wife views their marriage, and through this assumed identity it can be seen that it is actually Lowell himself who is reflecting on his marriage. He mentions that he often goes off for drives late at night and he makes reference to this tendency in his poem Skunk Hour, but with this poem it can be seen that Lowell seems to dissociate himself from others around him and his involvement with his marriage seems to take a seat on the backburner compared to the value and focus that Lowell places upon driving. Even moreso, when the mention of sex comes up, Lowell describes his wife describing him as stalling above her like an elaphant. This is worth noting because when elephants mate, the male elephant will go into a kind of check and act mode where he, in g-rated language, echolocates into sex. He sends out a sign and if the sign is sent back to him he proceeds, however with Lowell there seems to be a definite lack of reciprocation on his part to his wife. To me, I think he sends out a sign and it is given back, but he doesnt proceed. I dunno, there just seems to be a serious lack of feeling or connection that Lowell exhibits towards his wife and, in other poems, towards his daughter.
-This one is very recognizable and I'll go back to the poem Home After Three Months Away for evidence. The lines in which Lowell describes his coffin-length of soil and the feeling that he is cured, frizzled, rank, and stale. Almost as if Lowell is merely hanging out to dry now in his life, it is over. He has had the succulent juices dried out of him and he hangs dangling from a hook in the hot afternoon sun
These are only a few symptoms of PTSD which I have found evidence of in Lowell's poetry. There are many other symptoms that indicate PTSD, but regardless of diagnosis, Lowell felt a weight that was too heavy for him I think. So in order to cope with this burden he fell back upon writing and used it as a kind of support system, because he obviously could not find it through anything that involved relation or familiarity. Honestly, I think that the problem can be traced back to the fact that his father was an overbearing naval officer and his mother provided too much of a counter-measure to this. One was too hard one was too soft so to say and Lowell was caught in the middle of two extremes. In response to this, he picked neither, and honestly I dont think he could have sanely picked one side because that would have shifted the balance of power within the family unit. Go with his father and his mother would feel slighted, go with his mother and his father would feel slighted. So Lowell was most probably constantly pulled and torn between two states of extreme opposition until he just got too overwhelmed with it all.
I dunno, Lowell needed more hugs and cookies I think, and in a weird kind of way I feel bad for Lowell for having to deal with his problems the way he did...but at the same time I understand why I think.
