Life Studies

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Life Studies
Author	Robert Lowell
Language	English
Genre(s)	Poetry
Publisher	Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Publication date	1959
Preceded by	The Mills of The Kavanaughs
Followed by	Imitations

Life Studies is the fourth book of poems by Robert Lowell. Many critics consider it Lowell's most important book^{[citation needed]} and the Academy of American Poets named it one of their Groundbreaking Books. [1]

1 Composition
2 Publication
3 Structure
4 Critical Response
5 Historical significance
6 References
7 Footnotes

[edit] Composition

Some of the poems were written after Lowell's stay in the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Boston in early 1958. The manuscript was competed in the summer of 1958, and sent to Farrar, Straus & Cudahy in October.

[edit] Publication

Life Studies was first published in London by Faber & Faber. This was to allow for it to be entered for selection by the Poetry Book Society, one condition being that the first edition must be British. Because of the rush to release the book in Britain, the British first edition does not include the "91 Revere Street" section. The first American edition was published in 1959 by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York, and won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1960. Lowell's previous books were Land of Unlikeness, Lord Weary's Castle, and The Mills of The Kavanaughs.

[edit] Structure

The book is in four parts. Part One contains four poems:

Beyond the Alps
The Banker's Daughter
Inauguration Day: January 1953
A Mad Negro Soldier Confined at Munich

Part Two is a long prose passage entitled "91 Revere Street"

Part Three contains four poems:

Part Four is titled "Life Studies" and comprises:

I
- My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow
- Dunbarton
- Grandparents
- Commander Lowell
- Terminal Days at Beverly Farms
- Father's Bedroom
- For Sale
- Sailing Home from Rapallo
- During Fever
- Waking in the Blue
- Home After Three Months Away
II
- Memories of West Street and Lepke
- Man and Wife
- "To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage"
- Skunk Hour

[edit] Critical Response

M. L. Rosenthal wrote a review, entitled 'Poetry as Confession' which first applied the term 'confession' to Lowell's approach, and led to the name of the school of Confessional poetry.

John Thompson in The Kenyon Review spotted a key aspect of the book's significance: "For these poems, the question of propriety no longer exists. They have made a conquest: what they have won is a major expansion of the territory of poetry."^[1]