Robert Lowell has a different style of writing that I found difficult to follow. Lowell’s passion for war and man-kind shines through his poems, but what he relates these feelings to had me slightly lost. Lowell takes one idea, in this instance in the poem “For the Union Dead,” of death. He uses the destruction of a landmark, the Boston Common, which is being torn down to build a parking garage over. In the seventh stanza a description of what occurred during the hardships of war is described, “Two months after marching through Boston,/half the regiment was dead;/ at the dedication,/ William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.” (lines 25-28) Lowell is bothered by the destruction of a once significant historical landmark. He shows his disgust of the modernization in Boston through this poem. Lowell supported the war effort and all those once involved. To see a landmark destroyed only to be replaced by cement proves a blatant disregard for history and the fallen. This poem could also be looked at from a political sense as well. It could be viewed as the greed of the growing city and its lack of respect for how it even came into existence.