Robert Lowell : setting the river on fire : a study of genius, mania, and character / Kay Redfield Jamison.
Jamison, Kay R., author.; Traill, Thomas A., author.
2017
RC537 .J356 2017 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

Items

Details

Title Robert Lowell : setting the river on fire : a study of genius, mania, and character / Kay Redfield Jamison.
Author Jamison, Kay R., author.
Edition First edition.
ISBN 9780307700278 (hardcover)
0307700275 (hardcover)
Published New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2017.
Language English
Description xix, 532 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Call Number RC537 .J356 2017
Dewey Decimal Classification 616.89/50092
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 Prize-winning poetry, Robert Lowell (1917-1977) put his manic-depressive illness into the public domain. Now Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison brings her expertise to bear on his story, illuminating the relationship between bipolar illness and creativity, and examining how Lowell's illness and the treatment he received came to bear on his work. His New England roots, early breakdowns, marriages to three eminent writers, friendships with other poets, vivid presence as a teacher and writer refusing to give up in the face of mental illness--Jamison gives us Lowell's life through a lens that focuses our understanding of the poet's intense discipline, courage, and commitment to his art. Jamison had unprecedented access to Lowell's medical records, as well as to previously unpublished drafts and fragments of poems, and was the first biographer to speak to his daughter. With this new material and a psychologist's deep insight, Jamison delivers a bold, sympathetic account of a poet who was--both despite and because of mental illness--a passionate, original observer of the human condition"-- Provided by publisher.
Note "This is a Borzoi book"--Title page verso.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references (pages 431-510) and index.
Added Author Traill, Thomas A., author.
Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
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).

Browse Subjects

Show more subjects...

Statistics

from
to
Export