Robert Lowell in Love
288 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
12 b&w illus.
Hardcover
Release Date:09 Dec 2015
ISBN:9781625341860
Robert Lowell was known not only as a great poet but also as a writer whose devotion to his art came at a tremendous personal cost. In this book, his third on Robert Lowell, Jeffrey Meyers examines the poet's impassioned, troubled relationships with the key women in his life: his mother, Charlotte Winslow Lowell; his three wives—Jean Stafford, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Caroline Blackwood; nine of his many lovers; his close women friends—Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bishop, and Adrienne Rich; and his most talented students, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.
Lowell's charismatic personality, compelling poetry, and literary fame attracted lovers and friends who were both frightened and excited by his aura of brilliance and danger. He loved the idea of falling in love, and in his recurring manic episodes he needed women at the center of his emotional and artistic life. Each affair became an intense dramatic episode. Though he idealized his loves and encouraged their talents, his frenetic affairs and tortured marriages were always conducted on his own terms. Robert Lowell in Love tells the story of the poet in the grip of love and gives voice to the women who loved him, inspired his poetry, and suffered along with him.
Lowell's charismatic personality, compelling poetry, and literary fame attracted lovers and friends who were both frightened and excited by his aura of brilliance and danger. He loved the idea of falling in love, and in his recurring manic episodes he needed women at the center of his emotional and artistic life. Each affair became an intense dramatic episode. Though he idealized his loves and encouraged their talents, his frenetic affairs and tortured marriages were always conducted on his own terms. Robert Lowell in Love tells the story of the poet in the grip of love and gives voice to the women who loved him, inspired his poetry, and suffered along with him.
I couldn't put the book down, and when I did, couldn't wait to get back to it. It's a heartbreaking tale for all concerned, and it reads like a Greek tragedy, for Meyers has turned the pain of it all into a honeycomb for us to enjoy with a guilty, cathartic kind of schadenfreude.'—Paul Mariani, author of Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell
'Compelling and insightful. . . . This absorbing biography has many riches, including perceptive readings of some of Lowell's poetry, an appendix that reveals how Meyers was able to locate nine of Lowell's identifiable romantic interests, and another appendix that lists significant literary references and allusions that did not make it into Lowell's Collected Poems.'—BookPage
'Meyers presents what is clearly a considerable amount of research--in an appendix he sets out all his work tracking down mistress after mistress.'—The New Republic
'Meyers's research is extensive (a lengthy note section confirms this) and the writing is entertaining. This book will appeal to lovers of literary biography.'—Library Journal
'The poet lived a messy, mad, and ill-mannered life, injuring those around him with a profligacy made even clearer by the new facts Jeffrey Meyers has uncovered.'—The Washington Free Beacon
'Meyers has done sterling work in tracking down Lowell's mistresses and combing the creative output of his wives for variously refracted images of 'Cal': as such the book serves an important supplement to the biographies by Ian Hamilton and Paul Mariani.'—The Spectator
'This well-informed, carefully researched study is also a page-turner. Highly recommended.'—Choice
'Robert Lowell in Love examines Lowell's three marriages and nine of his affairs. Jeffrey Meyers criticises Lowell's selfishness and cruelty towards these women, but maintains that they suffered for a noble cause – poetry! His wives, all writers, were, Meyers also claims, 'driven by the snobbish appeal of his great name' and 'the formidable connections that would advance their careers'. Meyers is especially critical of Hardwick, whom he portrays as a less pretty, less talented, more status-obsessed Mary McCarthy, but sympathetic to the girlfriends and mistresses, whose encounters with Lowell make good material for easy sermonising. 'His women,' Meyers argues, 'were drawn to his genius and madness '¦ and became the sacrificial muses who inspired his poetry.''—London Review of Books
'Drawing on extensive archival research, including unpublished interviews and letters, Meyers reveals new information about many aspects of Lowell's life.'—American Literature
An eminent biographer and literary scholar, Jeffrey Meyers is the author of fifty-three books. He lives in Berkeley, California.
