At the close of "Ulysses and Circe," the first, longest, best poem of Robert Lowell's final book, the forerunner of all aging middle-class heroes returns to Ithaca for the bloody housecleaning we expect of him. But precisely here, just as the poem seems ready to sink into predictability, Lowell plays an astonishing trick. As Lowell has it, Penelope's palaceful of suitors is a means to an end: killing them off is Ulysses's way of striking at his real prey, his own former selves whom they all too much resemble:

He looks at her,
she looks at him admiring her,