Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell

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Summary: Robert Lowell - Poet, Puritan, Prophet
Review: 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.