There are no half measures to Kay Redfield Jamison’s medico-biographical study of poet Robert Lowell. It is impassioned, intellectually thrilling and often beautifully written, despite being repetitive and overlong: A little too much would seem to be just enough for Jamison.
Nonetheless, “Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire” achieves a magnificence and intensity — dare one say a manic brilliance? — that sets it apart from more temperate and orderly biographies. Above all, the book demands that readers seriously engage with its arguments, while also prodding them to reexamine their own beliefs about art, madness and moral responsibility. Reading this analysis of “genius, mania, and character” is an exhilarating experience.
From the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, Lowell was the most admired and talked-about American poet of his generation. Scion of a privileged New England family, he counted among many distinguished ancestors two notable poets — James Russell Lowell and Amy Lowell — as well as Percival Lowell, the astronomer who sighted what he thought were canals on Mars.
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