Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character
by Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield Jamison brings unusual authority to her study of Robert Lowell, blending literary biography with deep psychological insight. The book examines Lowell’s poetry alongside his manic illness, not to reduce the work to diagnosis but to illuminate the conditions in which genius and suffering intertwined. Jamison writes with sympathy, intelligence, and critical discipline. She is alert to the danger of romanticizing instability, and the book is strongest when it holds artistic brilliance and personal damage in tension. Lowell’s relationships, breakdowns, and self-revisions all become part of the story of a life lived at painful intensity. Jamison also gives readers a vivid sense of the mid-century literary world, its friendships, rivalries, and ambitions. The prose is elegant and accessible, often quietly moving. This is biography as interpretation, not just chronology. It asks what art costs, and who pays. A thoughtful, deeply engaging portrait of a poet and the fire he lived inside.
