Robert Lowell : setting the river on fire : a study of genius, mania, and character
by Jamison, Kay R. (Author), Traill, Thomas A. (Author)
Summary
"The best-selling author of An Unquiet Mind now gives us a groundbreaking life of one of the major American poets of the twentieth century that is at the same time a fascinating study of the relationship between manic-depressive (bipolar) illness, creative genius, and character. In his Pulitzer Priz... Full description
- Prologue: Old Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 19, 1845 ; "The trouble with writing poetry"
- I. Introduction: Steel and fire. No tickets for that altitude ; The archangel loved heights
- II. Origins: the puritanical iron hand of constraint. Sands of the unknown ; This dynamited brook ; A brackish reach
- III. Illness: the kingdom of the mad. In flight, without a ledge ; Snow-sugared, unraveling ; Writing takes the ache away
- IV. Character: how will the heart endure?. With all my love, Cal ; And will not scare
- V. Illness and art: something altogether lived. A magical orange grove in a nightmare ; Words meat-hooked from the living steer
- VI. Mortality: Come; I bell thee home. Life blown towards evening ; Bleak-boned with survival ; He is out of bounds now
- Appendix I: Psychiatric records of Robert Lowell ; Appendix II: Mania and depression: clinical description, diagnosis and nomenclature ; Appendix III: Medical history of Robert Lowell (by Thomas Traill, FRCP).