From the publication of his first major volume in 1946, Lord Weary's Castle, to a few years before his death in 1977, Robert Lowell held sway as the premier English-language poet of his time. Lord Weary's Castle seemed to push poetic language and cultural critique in exciting new directions, yet they were directions sanctioned by the New Criticism of his time. In 1959, Lowell's Life Studies dramatically broke the very traditions...