‘Cal’s Doorknob: Another Approach to Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” ’

Notes the critical tendency to emphasize the symbolic and universal in Lowell's poetry, and argues - using 'Skunk Hour' as an illustrative text - that this misrepresents a poet whose writing was very much grounded in the specifics of day to day experience, and who prayed for 'the grace of accuracy' in his depiction of this experience.