Robert Lowell

Biography
• On March 1, 1917, Robert Lowell was
born into one of Boston's oldest and most
prominent families.
• He attended Harvard College for two
years before transferring to Kenyon
College, where he studied poetry under
John Crowe Ransom and received an
undergraduate degree in 1940.
• He took graduate courses at Louisiana
State University where he studied with
Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks.
 Evolving style
• Lowell's early poetry was "characterized by its Christian
motifs and symbolism, historical references, and intricate
formalism."
• In the 1940s he wrote intricate and tightly patterned
poems that incorporated traditional meter and rhyme
• in the late 1950s when he published Life Studies, he began
to write startlingly original personal or "confessional"
poetry in much looser forms and meters;
• in the 1960s he wrote increasingly public poetry
• in the 1970s he created poems that incorporated and
extended elements of all the earlier poetry
• Influenced by younger and older poets.
• Had influence from Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Tate, W.D.
Snodgrass and Allen Ginsberg.
• Had a close friendship with Bishop, her influence can be
seen in his poem The Skunk Hour,
Quotes about his depressed life

• “The light at the end of the tunnel is just the light of an

oncoming train.”
• “In the end, there is no end.”
• “If youth is a defect, it is one that we outgrow too soon.”
• Suffered from manic depression and mental illness in his life.
Made multiple visits to the McLean Mental Hospital.
• Started to take Lithium from age fifty until he died.
• “History has to live with what was here,
• clutching and close to fumbling all we had -
• it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
• unlike writing, life never finishes.”
 Influence
• During the 1960s, Lowell was the most public, well-known
American poet.
• in June 1967, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine as
part of a cover story in which he was praised as "the best
American poet of his generation."
• In March 2005, the Academy of American Poets named Life
Studies one of their Groundbreaking Books of the 20th century,
stating that it had "a profound impact", particularly over the
confessional poetry movement that the book helped launch.
• In a 1962 interview, Sylvia Plath stated that Life Studies had
influenced the poetry she was writing at that time.