47 Facts About Robert Lowell

Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet.

Robert Lowell was appointed the sixth Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, where he served from 1947 until 1948.

On his father's side, Robert Lowell was the great-great-grandson of Maj.

Robert Lowell received his high school education at St Mark's School, a prominent prep school in Southborough, Massachusetts.

At St Mark's, he became lifelong friends with Frank Parker, an artist who later created the prints that Robert Lowell used on the covers of most of his books.

Robert Lowell traveled to Nashville with Moore, who took Robert Lowell to Tate's house.

Robert Lowell called the act "a terrible piece of youthful callousness".

Robert Lowell was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year and was valedictorian of his class.

Robert Lowell settled into the so-called "writer's house" with fellow students Peter Taylor, Robie Macauley and Randall Jarrell.

Partly in rebellion against his parents, Robert Lowell converted from Episcopalianism to Catholicism.

Robert Lowell was a conscientious objector during World War II and served several months at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut.

Robert Lowell was vehemently opposed to the war, but equivocal about being identified too closely with the 'peace movement': there were many views he did not share with the more fiery of the 'peaceniks' and it was not in his nature to join movements that he had no wish to lead.

Robert Lowell was a signer of the anti-war manifesto "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority" circulated by members of the radical intellectual collective RESIST.

From 1950 to 1953, Robert Lowell taught in the well-reputed Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, together with Paul Engle and Robie Macauley.

From 1963 to 1970, Robert Lowell commuted from his home in New York City to Boston in order to teach classes at Harvard.

Robert Lowell married the novelist and short-story writer Jean Stafford in 1940.

Shortly thereafter, in 1949, Robert Lowell married the writer Elizabeth Hardwick with whom he had a daughter, Harriet, in 1957.

Blackwood and Robert Lowell were married in 1972 in England where they decided to settle and where they raised their son, Sheridan.

Robert Lowell became the stepfather to Blackwood's young daughter, Ivana, for whom he would write the sonnet "Ivana," published in his book The Dolphin.

Robert Lowell had a close friendship with the poet Elizabeth Bishop that lasted from 1947 until Robert Lowell's death in 1977.

Robert Lowell maintained a close friendship with Randall Jarrell from their 1937 meeting at Kenyon College until Jarrell's 1965 death.

Robert Lowell openly acknowledged Jarrell's influence over his writing and frequently sought out Jarrell's input regarding his poems before he published them.

Robert Lowell was hospitalized many times throughout his adult life due to bipolar disorder, the mental condition then known as "manic depression".

On multiple occasions, Robert Lowell was admitted to the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and one of his poems, "Waking in the Blue", references his stay in this large psychiatric facility.

When he was fifty, Robert Lowell began taking lithium to treat the condition.

Robert Lowell died from a heart attack in a taxi cab in Manhattan on September 12,1977, at the age of 60, while on his way to see his ex-wife, Elizabeth Hardwick.

Robert Lowell was buried in Stark Cemetery in Dunbarton, New Hampshire.

In 1946, Robert Lowell received wide acclaim for his next book, Lord Weary's Castle, which included five poems slightly revised from Land of Unlikeness and thirty new poems.

In 1951, Robert Lowell published The Mills of the Kavanaughs, which centered on its epic title poem and failed to receive the high praise that his previous book had received.

Robert Lowell followed Life Studies with Imitations, a volume of loose translations of poems by classical and modern European poets, including Rilke, Montale, Baudelaire, Pasternak, and Rimbaud, for which he received the 1962 Bollingen Poetry Translation Prize.

Also in 1961, Robert Lowell published his English translation of the French verse play Phedre by 17th century playwright Jean Racine.

Robert Lowell changed the spelling of the title of the play to Phaedra.

In 1964, Robert Lowell wrote three one-act plays that were meant to be performed together as a trilogy, titled The Old Glory.

In 1967, Robert Lowell published his next book of poems, Near the Ocean.

The second half of the book shows Robert Lowell returning to writing loose translations.

Robert Lowell referred to these fourteen-line poems as sonnets although they sometimes failed to incorporate regular meter and rhyme ; however, some of Robert Lowell's sonnets were written in blank verse with a definitive pentameter and a small handful included rhyme.

In 1969, Robert Lowell made his last foray into dramatic work with the publication of his prose translation of the ancient Greek play Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus.

Robert Lowell was particularly criticized for this by his friends Adrienne Rich and Elizabeth Bishop.

Since the release of Robert Lowell's Collected Poems in 2003, a number of critics and poets have praised the sonnets, including Michael Hofmann, William Logan, and Richard Tillinghast.

Robert Lowell published his last volume of poetry, Day by Day, in 1977, the year of his death.

In May 1977, Robert Lowell won the $10,000 National Medal for Literature awarded by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and Day by Day was awarded that year's National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry.

In many of the poems, Robert Lowell reflects on his life, his past relationships, and his own mortality.

The best-known poem from this collection is the last one, titled "Epilogue," in which Robert Lowell reflects upon the "confessional" school of poetry with which his work was associated.

In 1987, Lowell's longtime editor, Robert Giroux, edited Lowell's Collected Prose.

Robert Lowell's Collected Poems, edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter, was published in 2003.

In 2001, the alternative rock band They Might Be Giants wrote and recorded a song called "Robert Lowell" which uses Lowell's poem "Memories of West Street and Lepke" as the basis for the lyrics.

Robert Lowell was a featured subject in the 2014 HBO documentary The 50 Year Argument about The New York Review of Books which Robert Lowell and his second wife, Elizabeth Hardwick, were both involved in founding.