Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character
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“I noticed that at a certain point”: Sidney Nolan, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1980, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
“the particular hopped-up state”: Allen Ginsberg, quoted in Jane Kramer, Allen Ginsberg in America (New York: International Publishing, 1969), 63.
“overborne by the fever”: Robert Fitzgerald, “The Things of the Eye,” 109.
“The affliction was so like the poetry”: Jonathan Raban, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1980, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
“I write in mania”: Jonathan Raban, interview with the author, June 2012.
“In many ways”: Jonathan Raban, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1980, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
“I have always felt”: Esther Brooks, “Remembering Cal,” 39–40.
“unable to concentrate”: Robert Lowell’s medical records, Payne Whitney Clinic, September 1949.
“very depressed by how confused”: Ibid.
“periodic de profundis”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Peter Taylor, March 4, 1976, Vanderbilt.
“Only out of pain”: Robert Lowell, “John Crowe Ransom,” Collected Prose, 27.
“In truth I seem”: Robert Lowell, “Afterthought” in Notebook, 263.
“On the great day”: Robert Lowell, “Joy,” Notebook, 246.
“Depression’s no gift”: Ian Hamilton, “A Conversation with Robert Lowell,” 27. “Lost cake” is in the original transcript of Hamilton’s interview, HRC.
John Berryman recalled: Robert Fitzgerald, “The Things of the Eye,” 108.
When Frank Bidart pointed out: Frank Bidart, “Introduction: ‘You Didn’t Write, You Rewrote,’ ” in Robert Lowell, Collected Poems, xii.
“the mania for phrases”: Robert Lowell, “Les Mots,” Notebook, 38.
“I took 14 poems”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, January 18, 1974, Letters, 618.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever written”: Robert Lowell, “An Interview with Frederick Seidel,” Collected Prose, 248.
“was revising something”: Elizabeth Hardwick, interview with Darryl Pinckney, “The Art of Fiction No. 87.”
“I have observed that”: Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, January 1, 1852.
“madness does not give”: Helen Vendler, correspondence with the author, February 9, 2011.
“One of the first things”: Peter Taylor, “The Lively Arts: Robert Lowell.”
“grinding labor”: John Thompson, “Robert Lowell: 1917–1977.”
“Lately, I’ve felt I was waking”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, February 24, 1960, Words in Air, 313.
“It takes just a moment”: Robert Lowell, “Balloon,” Collected Poems, 987.
“skating the sheet”: Robert Lowell, “While Hearing the Archduke Trio,” Collected Poems, 477.
“I hang by a kitetail”: Robert Lowell, “Leaving Home, Marshal Ney,” Collected Poems, 476.
“window’s sloping ledge”: Robert Lowell, “Window-Ledge: 2. Gramsci in Prison,” Collected Poems, 570.
“in flight without a ledge”: Robert Lowell, “Morning Blue,” Collected Poems, 657.
“foothold on the map”: Robert Lowell, “Dropping South: Brazil,” Collected Poems, 369.
“There is no foothold”: Robert Lowell, Prometheus Bound, 60.
“We’ve reached the end of the road”: Ibid., 66.
“When I finished Life Studies”: Robert Lowell, acceptance speech for National Book Award, 1960.
“Have you seen an inchworm crawl”: Robert Lowell, “For Elizabeth Bishop 4,” Collected Poems, 595.
“Excellence had left”: Robert Lowell, “Robert Frost,” Collected Prose, 10.
“The subject throughout”: Robert Lowell, “Wallace Stevens,” Collected Prose, 12–13.
“makes a very different acquaintance”: Robert Louis Stevenson, Aes Triplex and Other Essays, 18–19.
“just pride”: Robert Lowell, “Reading Myself,” Collected Poems, 591.
“The fires men build”: Robert Lowell, “Long Summer,” Collected Poems, 943.
“Fire will be the first absolute power”: Robert Lowell, Prometheus Bound, 55.
“Like a plethoric burning martyr”: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 462.
“For aught we know”: William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902; New York: Penguin, 1982), 15.
“it is only the wild”: Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, November 16, 1850.
“wild thinking”: Ibid.
“marvelously expert” and “laboriously concocted”: Robert Lowell acceptance speech, National Book Award, 1960.
“My mind’s not right”: Robert Lowell, “Skunk Hour,” Collected Poems, 191–92.
“I watch my blood”: Robert Lowell, “High Blood,” Notebook 1967–68, 134.
“great days of sickness”: Robert Lowell, “For Ann Adden 4. Coda,” Collected Poems, 536.
“I have to brace my hand”: Ibid.
“I so pray”: Robert Lowell, “While Hearing the Archduke Trio,” Collected Poems, 477.
“Stable equilibrium is death”: Henry Adams, A Letter to American Teachers of History (Baltimore: J. H. Furst & Co., 1910).
“Life by definition breeds”: Robert Lowell, “The Nihilist as Hero,” Collected Poems, 590.
“each book of Lowell’s”: Al Alvarez, “A Talk with Robert Lowell,” 39.
“not the first poet to undertake”: Donald Hall, The Weather for Poetry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982).
“a poet of great originality”: Randall Jarrell, No Other Book (New York: HarperCollins, 1999).
“To read Lowell in sequence”: A. O. Scott, “A Life’s Study: Why Robert Lowell Is America’s Most Important Career Poet,” Slate, June 20, 2003.
“There is an art of restraint”: Adam Kirsch, The Wounded Surgeon: Confession and Transformation in Six American Poets (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 61.
“I was guided”: Robert Lowell, Prometheus Bound, 50–51.
“It’s been tough”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Randall Jarrell, October 6, 1951, Letters, 177.
“I think I am going”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Allen Tate, November 5, 1952, Princeton.
“It’s hell finding a new style”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Peter Taylor, December 7, 1952, Vanderbilt.
“It’s only possible”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Allen Tate, March 15, 1953, Princeton.
“seem to me a gift”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Robert Frost, July 3, 1958, Letters, 325.
“old stuff”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Chard Powers Smith, October 3, 1959, Letters, 354.
“One wants a whole new deck”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Randall Jarrell, January 30, 1960, Letters, 359.
“Time to grub up”: Robert Lowell, “Waking Early Sunday Morning,” New York Review of Books, August 5, 1965; reprinted in Collected Poems, 933.
“a new tune”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Hardwick, November 28, 1970, Letters, 560.
“owes all its onward impulses”: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, 235.
“shows that every poet”: Boris Pasternak quoted by Hilton Kramer in his obituary for Robert Lowell, “The Loss of a Poet,” New York Times, October 16, 1977.
“have the courage to disregard”: Ibid.
“Man is never happy”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Hardwick, July 12, 1976, Robert Lowell Papers, HRC.
“continuing story”: Robert Lowell, “After Enjoying Six or Seven Essays on Me,” Collected Poems, 992.
“O to break loose”: Robert Lowell, “Waking Early Sunday Morning,” Collected Poems, 383, 386.
“about energy”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Shozu Tokunago, June 26, 1967, Letters, 486.
“In the years I knew Lowell”: Frank Bidart, “A Tribute to Robert Lowell,” Academy of American Poets, October 14, 1987. Transcript of talk in the Robert Lowell Papers, HRC.
have compassi
on: Robert Lowell, “Yvor Winters,” Collected Prose, 61.
“when one is dealing with horrors”: Letter from Graham Greene to Lee Goerner, July 9, 1977, in Graham Greene: A Life in Letters, ed. Richard Greene (New York: Little, Brown, 2007), 345.
“Memory is not an end”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Peter Taylor, July 1941, Letters, 33.
“No voice outsings”: Robert Lowell, “Paradise Regained: June at McLean’s Hospital,” manuscript draft, Houghton Library, 2763.
“I can’t see myself”: Robert Lowell, “Summer Between Terms,” Collected Poems, 658.
“Sometimes, my mind”: Robert Lowell, “Fever,” Collected Poems, 563.
“our hallucinator”: Robert Lowell, “Moon-Landings,” Collected Poems, 582.
“have my antics”: Robert Lowell, “The Downlook,” Collected Poems, 836.
“naming work of poetry”: Helen Vendler, “Lowell’s Persistence: The Forms Depression Makes,” Kenyon Review 22 (Winter 2000): 233.
“admirably schooled in every grace”: Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Richard Cory,” Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson (New York: Macmillan, 1930).
“Waking in the Blue”: Robert Lowell, “Waking in the Blue,” Collected Poems, 183–84.
VI. MORTALITY: COME, I BELL THEE HOME
“Nothing will go again”: Robert Lowell, “Mary Winslow,” Collected Poems, 28.
13. LIFE BLOWN TOWARDS EVENING
“What shall I do”: Robert Lowell, “New York Again,” Collected Poems, 704.
“a bachelor world”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Hardwick, April 25, 1970, Letters, 532.
“For all the horrors”: Life magazine, February 19, 1965.
“I’ll go back to America”: Dudley Young, “Talk with Robert Lowell,” New York Times Book Review, April 4, 1971, 33.
“hard to learn”: Tim Mayer, The Village Voice, October 3, 1977.
“reckless blood”: Steven Aronson, “Sophisticated Lady,” Town and Country, September 1993, 144.
“thought alike”: Kathleen Spivack, interview with the author, March 19, 2014.
“They were both drinkers”: Xandra Gowrie, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1980, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library. Lowell had written to Blackwood at the end of their relationship, “I do love you—two eggs colliding” (n.d. late May 1977, Letters, 668).
“Sufferer, how can you help me”: Robert Lowell, “Seesaw,” Collected Poems, 818.
“Will we always be”: Ibid.
“had not seen him mad”: Kathleen Spivack, interview with the author, March 19, 2014.
“someone he knew he had hurt”: Ibid.
“dealt with consequences”: Helen Vendler, correspondence with the author, February 9, 2011.
“more like the rest of us”: Letter from Elizabeth Hardwick to Mary McCarthy, June 15, 1977, Vassar.
“I am a woman”: Robert Lowell, “Mermaid Emerging,” Collected Poems, 684.
“spotted the genius”: Jonathan Raban, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1979, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
They were close collaborators: Evgenia Citkowitz, interview with the author, March 12, 2014.
“Nobody gives me any credit”: Steven Aronson, “Sophisticated Lady,” 148.
“Writers can retaliate”: Ibid.
“They were shy and nervous”: Evgenia Citkowitz, interview with the author, March 12, 2014.
“took happiness where they could”: Ibid.
“The golden summers”: Ibid.
“who had her own afflictions”: Ibid.
“She spoke of the dread”: Ibid.
Always it was to be: Shakespeare, King Lear, act 1, scene 5.
“I didn’t want him”: Caroline Blackwood, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1979, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
“Since you went”: Robert Lowell, “Diagnosis: To Caroline in Scotland,” Collected Poems, 649.
“He seemed a poor crazed creature”: Letter from Philip Larkin to Monica Jones, May 1, 1970, Letters to Monica, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Faber & Faber, 2010), 408.
“I draw a card”: Robert Lowell, “Doubt 1. Draw,” Collected Poems, 672.
“All is as it was”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Harriet Lowell, August 27, 1970, Robert Lowell Papers, HRC.
“left to make all the arrangements”: Harriet Lowell, correspondence with the author, April 2012.
prescription for lithium: Letter from Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell, June 5, 1970, “Shouldn’t I try to get a prescription from Dr. Platman?” (a psychiatrist at Columbia University), she asked Lowell; Harriet Lowell.
“more or less under control”: Letter from Elizabeth Hardwick to Mary McCarthy, June 25, 1970, Vassar.
“Don’t feel that the lithium”: Letter from Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell, July 11, 1970, Harriet Lowell.
“brilliant, proud, dignified man”: Blair Clark’s notes taken before, during, and after Robert Lowell’s hospitalization in London from June 9 to August 13, 1970, Blair Clark Papers, HRC.
“I realized when I got here”: Letter from Elizabeth Hardwick to Mary McCarthy, August 4, 1970, Vassar.
“Sometimes a look”: Ibid.
“Darling Cal”: Letter from Caroline Blackwood to Robert Lowell, n.d. July 1970, Robert Lowell Papers, HRC.
“ ‘I think of you every minute’ ”: Robert Lowell, “Caroline 4. Marriage?” Collected Poems, 656.
Lowell struggled to convince: Letter from Robert Lowell to Caroline Blackwood, n.d. July 1970, Letters, 541.
“terrified of being mad alone”: Caroline Blackwood, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1979, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
“well and not depressed”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Blair Clark, September 11, 1970, Robert Lowell Papers, HRC.
“I don’t know whether I’ve said”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Hardwick, October 18, 1970, Letters, 550–51.
“once annual depression”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Hardwick, October 21, 1970, Letters, 551.
“I wonder if we”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Hardwick, November 7, 1970, Letters, 556.
“Our love will not come back”: Robert Lowell, “Obit,” Collected Poems, 642.
“White clapboards”: Robert Lowell, “No Hearing 3,” Collected Poems, 638.
“This is almost the first time”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Hardwick, June 14, 1970, Letters, 540–41.
“never wrote more”: Robert Lowell, “A Conversation with Ian Hamilton,” Collected Prose, 271–72.
“Ideas sprang from the bushes”: Ibid., 272.
“The time is a summer”: Robert Lowell, “Afterthought,” Notebook, 262.
“beautiful and major work”: William Meredith, “Notebook 1967–68,” New York Times Book Review, June 15, 1969.
“the response of a racked”: Ibid.
“so outrageously beautiful”: Letter from Howard Nemerov to Robert Lowell, 1970.
“The prophecy has long been fulfilled”: Douglas Dunn, “Snatching the Bays,” Encounter 36 (1971): 65–70.
“preference for the large canvas”: Ibid.
“sick in hospital”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Peter Taylor, November 1, 1970, Letters, 555.
“baffling vacillation”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Blair Clark, November 7, 1970, Robert Lowell Papers, HRC.
“I do not want Cal back”: Letter from Elizabeth Hardwick to Blair Clark, October 23, 1970, Robert Lowell Papers, HRC.
“frantic affection”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Blair Clark, November 21, 1970, Letters, 558.
“I increasingly fear”: Ibid., 559.
“If I have had hysterical”: Robert Lowell, “Flight to New York: 2. With Caroline at the Air-Terminal,” Collected Poems, 702.
“Caroline and I”: Letter from Robert Lowell to William Alfred, March 20, 1971, Letters, 564–65.
“I think I am happier”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Peter Taylor, May 13, 1971, Letters, 572.
&n
bsp; “Not a fight for seven months”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Peter Taylor, June 24, 1971, Vanderbilt.
“Will the hailstones of the gods”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Stanley Kunitz, April 25, 1971, Letters, 570.
“We breathe now”: Ibid.
“We are never born again”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Adrienne Rich, June 23, 1971, Letters, 574.
“The only important thing”: Ibid.
“I think of Lizzie and Harriet hourly”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Philip Booth, August 19, 1971, Dartmouth College Library.
“massively enthusiastic”: Jonathan Raban, interview with Ian Hamilton, 1979, Ian Hamilton Papers, British Library.
“Lowell and Blackwood were both treating”: Ibid.
“terrifically excited”: Ibid.
“an animal in its own territory”: Jonathan Raban, interview with author, February 2012.
“After 12 hours”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Harriet Lowell, October 10, 1971, Robert Lowell Papers, HRC.
“too much blood is seeping”: Robert Lowell, “Robert Sheridan Lowell,” Collected Poems, 691.
“I have a doctor’s and psychiatrist’s statement”: Letter from Robert Lowell to Peter Taylor, October 9, 1971, Vanderbilt.
“How unretentive we become”: Robert Lowell, “Sheridan,” Collected Poems, 779.
“Past fifty”: Robert Lowell, “For Sheridan,” Collected Poems, 793.
“Soft Wood”: Robert Lowell, “Soft Wood,” Collected Poems, 370–71.
“After fifty”: Robert Lowell, “Flight to New York: 1. Plane-Ticket,” Collected Poems, 702.
“a happiness so slow burning”: Robert Lowell, “Marriage: 11. Ninth Month,” Collected Poems, 690.
“when I open the window”: Robert Lowell, “Morning Away from You,” Collected Poems, 692.
“My hand”: Robert Lowell, “Knowing,” Collected Poems, 687.
“it’s enough to wake without old fears”: Robert Lowell, “Overhanging Cloud,” Collected Poems, 691.
“None swims with her”: Robert Lowell, “Mermaid 1,” Collected Poems, 665.
“I see you as a baby killer whale”: Robert Lowell, “Mermaid 4,” Collected Poems, 666.
“I’ve searched the rough black ocean”: Robert Lowell, “Mermaid 5,” Collected Poems, 667.