Robert Lowell: A Biography
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few literary lives of the twentieth century were as turbulent, brilliant, and consequential as that of Robert Lowell, and Ian Hamilton's Robert Lowell: A Biography captures every searing dimension of it. Hamilton chronicles the arc of one of America's most celebrated confessional poets — from his privileged Boston Brahmin origins through his tormented struggles with mental illness, his conscientious objection during World War II, and his towering achievements in collections such as Life Studies and For the Union Dead — painting an unsparing portrait of a man whose genius and instability were inextricably intertwined. Hamilton, himself a distinguished poet and critic, brings forensic precision and deep literary sympathy to his subject, drawing on extensive interviews with Lowell's family, friends, and contemporaries to construct a narrative that is as much a cultural history of mid-century American letters as it is a personal biography. The result is an authoritative account that illuminates how Lowell transformed private anguish into public art, reshaping the very language of modern poetry. For anyone who has ever read a Lowell poem and felt the ground shift beneath them, this biography answers the haunting question: what kind of life produces verse like that?
Author: Ian Hamilton
Format: Hardback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few literary lives of the twentieth century were as turbulent, brilliant, and consequential as that of Robert Lowell, and Ian Hamilton's Robert Lowell: A Biography captures every searing dimension of it. Hamilton chronicles the arc of one of America's most celebrated confessional poets — from his privileged Boston Brahmin origins through his tormented struggles with mental illness, his conscientious objection during World War II, and his towering achievements in collections such as Life Studies and For the Union Dead — painting an unsparing portrait of a man whose genius and instability were inextricably intertwined. Hamilton, himself a distinguished poet and critic, brings forensic precision and deep literary sympathy to his subject, drawing on extensive interviews with Lowell's family, friends, and contemporaries to construct a narrative that is as much a cultural history of mid-century American letters as it is a personal biography. The result is an authoritative account that illuminates how Lowell transformed private anguish into public art, reshaping the very language of modern poetry. For anyone who has ever read a Lowell poem and felt the ground shift beneath them, this biography answers the haunting question: what kind of life produces verse like that?