Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell

This is truly a wonderful biography of a poet written by a poet. I found that MANY passages flow like poetry. If you are interested in Lowell and his times, you will not be able to put this book down. My favorite period is the mid-to late fifties in and around the New England area. It was an extremely fertile time: Richard Wilbur, Ann Sexton, Sylvia Plath and on and on. The country was coming out of the deadening 50's and moving on to the New Frontier 60's with all it's social and cultural upheavals. If you're a teacher of any grade, tell your students this book has somewhere in the neighborhood of 1400 footnotes. That might stop their complaints when they have to make ONLY 2 citations. More than 'just' a biographer, Mariani is himself, a writer and a poet, and he uses his skills deftly to bring Lowell to life. An excellent read!!!!!!!!

Robert Lowell is condidered one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century; some rank him second only to Frost. His poetry, always extremely personal and frank, and displaying great technical skill (he wrote in strict classical forms; only late in life did he write in free verse), was highly praised and prized: he won three Pulitzers. A Catholic convert, later an agnostic, he wrestled mightily with the Creator in his work. He suffered 8 nervous breakdowns during his life and was married three times. During the 1960s, he was a visible participant in the anti-war movement. Mariani is an excellent writer himself and tells Lowell's life story, from the successes to the heartbreaks, interestingly and well.

Robert Lowell has always seemed to me to be just out of reach. I was too young to witness his poetry readings to the Washington crowds protesting the war in Vietnam. By the time I was set "Skunk Hour" in my final year of secondary schooling, Lowell had been dead for a half dozen years. Based on Lowell's letters, poetry and critism and of those who knew him; this work is an exhaustive and comprehensive account of the poet's priveliged and frequently turbulent life. His three marriages are discussed, as are his spell in jail,( as a Conscientious Objector)and his numerous admissions to psychiatric hospital due to manic depression. From his aristocratic but dysfunctional childhood to his last years, the reader is made aware of Lowell's progression and prowess as a poet. Of fascination too is his interactions with other great poets, most notably Frost, Pound and Eliot; the latter described as 'The Master', a mantle passed to Lowell on Eliot's death. "Lost Puritan" is illuminating and revealing, it will bring Lowell into reach for anyone who is an afficianado of his poetry. A scholarly salute to the greatest poet of the second half of the twentieth century.