In the end there is no end. - Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell was a great American poet. He was born into a wealthy, intellectual family, educated at Harvard, was a prolific, Pulitzer Prize winning writer, and died in 1977 at age 60.
He was the first, best and most famous of the "confessional poets."
Another thing that set him apart from the rest of us is that he suffered severely from bipolar disorder. He was hospitalized for months at a time.
Lowell's words below remind me so very much of a couple of people I love:
I had violent passions for various pursuits usually taking the form of collecting: tools; names of birds; marbles; catching butterflies; snakes, turtles, etc; buying books on Napoleon...and gradually amass(ed) hundreds of soldiers. None of this led anywhere.
Kay Redfield Jamison's new book, "Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A study of Genius, Mania, and Character" tells us a lot about his illness and his genius. We know that a disproportionate number of highly creative people have what we used to call "mood disorders."
In the year 1917 Robert Lowell was very fortunate to have been born into wealth. It protected him from a world that did not deal well with mental illness or even just "different-ness." I'm grateful that we're gradually starting to understand that most of the creativity and beauty in this world is given to us by those who are wired a little differently and sometimes require a greater degree of care and understanding.
It's the light of the oncoming train. - Robert Lowell.
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