Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire
A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character
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- £9.49
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- £9.49
Publisher Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • In this magisterial study of the relationship between illness and art, the best-selling author of An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison, brings an entirely fresh understanding to the work and life of Robert Lowell (1917-1977), whose intense, complex, and personal verse left a lasting mark on the English language and changed the public discourse about private matters.
In his poetry, Lowell put his manic-depressive illness (now known as bipolar disorder) into the public domain, and in the process created a new and arresting language for madness. Here Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison brings her expertise in mood disorders to bear on Lowell’s story, illuminating not only the relationships between mania, depression, and creativity but also how Lowell’s illness and treatment influenced his work (and often became its subject). A bold, sympathetic account of a poet who was—both despite and because of mental illness—a passionate, original observer of the human condition.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jamison (An Unquiet Mind), a psychologist and honorary professor of English at St. Andrew's University, is uniquely qualified to pursue the connections between creativity and mania in this case, through the brilliant example of American poet Robert Lowell (1917 1977). He was born into a prominent New England family from which he inherited both deep Puritan roots and a legacy of manic depression. Jamison's study is a "narrative" of his illness. She is not interested in biography per se, but does place Lowell's mental health in the context of his life and show his illness's influence on his poems. Jamison paints a sympathetic but brutally honest portrait of what manic depressive disorder can do to both sufferers and the people around them her depiction of Lowell's second wife, critic and fiction author Elizabeth Hardwick, is especially compelling. She is able to draw on medical records from his various hospitalizations, released by Lowell's family to Jamison, and bring her own medical expertise to bear. Some judicious editing would not go amiss this is a long read with some repetition but Jamison has constructed a novel and rewarding way to view Lowell's life and output.
