Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell, (1917-77). US poet. The son of a distinguished New England family, Lowell studied at Harvard and Kenyon College, Ohio. In 1940 he converted to Roman Catholicism (a faith he later abandoned). During World War II religious objections to the bombing of civilians led him to refuse the draft, a stance that resulted in his imprisonment. Lowell’s early poems, collected in such volumes as Lord Weary’s Castle (1946), show the influence of the Metaphysical poets in their compressed formal style. With Life Studies (1959), however, his art took a radically different turn; the poems are more loosely written and deal with aspects of hi s turbulent personal life, including the episodes of madness that periodically afflicted him. This ‘confessional’ approach had a great influence on young US poets. Lowell’s later work includes a volume of translations, Imitations (1961), For the Union Dead (1964), and Notebook (1969).
