Robert Lowell

Robert Lowell (1917-1977), American poet, noted for his lyric virtuosity, rich language, and social concern. A cousin of the distinguished intellectuals Amy Lowell, Percival Lowell, and Abbott Lowell, Robert Lowell was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard University and Kenyon College. Lowell suffered religious doubt and temporarily converted to Roman Catholicism in 1940; later he was imprisoned briefly for refusing to serve in World War II (1939-1945). During the 1950s he spent time in a mental hospital, and in the 1960s he took part in the antiwar and civil rights movements.

Lowell's first volume of poems, Land of Unlikeness (1944), reflected the disturbing effects of World War II. The volume Lord Weary's Castle (1946; Pulitzer Prize, 1947) contains his highly acclaimed poem “Colloquy at Black Rock,” which centers on a Roman Catholic feast. The chief long narrative poem in Mills of the Kavanaughs (1951) is a Greek legend set in New England. Life Studies (1959), which received the National Book Award in 1960, revealed Lowell's inner torments and marked him as an influential figure in the emergence of confessional poetry in the 1950s (see American Literature: Poetry: After Modernism). Later poems in For the Union Dead (1964) and Near the Ocean (1967) are more political. His other works of poetry include Imitations (1961) and The Dolphin (1973; Pulitzer Prize, 1974). Lowell had a remarkable ability to express in his poetry both objective and subjective views of the turmoil of the contemporary world. His trilogy of plays, The Old Glory (1965), is a historical survey of American culture. He also adapted the ancient Greek dramas Phaedra (1963) and Prometheus Bound (1969).