Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire

November 28, 2016
Jamison (An Unquiet Mind), a psychologist and honorary professor of English at St. Andrew’s University, is uniquely qualified to pursue the connections between creativity and mania—in this case, through the brilliant example of American poet Robert Lowell (1917–1977). He was born into a prominent New England family from which he inherited both deep Puritan roots and a legacy of manic depression. Jamison’s study is a “narrative” of his illness. She is not interested in biography per se, but does place Lowell’s mental health in the context of his life and show his illness’s influence on his poems. Jamison paints a sympathetic but brutally honest portrait of what manic depressive disorder can do to both sufferers and the people around them—her depiction of Lowell’s second wife, critic and fiction author Elizabeth Hardwick, is especially compelling. She is able to draw on medical records from his various hospitalizations, released by Lowell’s family to Jamison, and bring her own medical expertise to bear. Some judicious editing would not go amiss—this is a long read with some repetition—but Jamison has constructed a novel and rewarding way to view Lowell’s life and output.

December 1, 2016
A renowned psychologist connects bipolar disorder to creativity.MacArthur Fellow Jamison (Psychiatry/Johns Hopkins Univ. School of Medicine; Nothing Was the Same: A Memoir, 2009, etc.) brings her professional expertise to an intimate, sensitive, and perceptive account of the illness from which poet Robert Lowell (1917-1977) suffered most of his life: bipolar disorder, characterized by violent mood swings, an illness from which Jamison also suffers. Drawing on Lowell's medical records, Jamison closely examines the course of his disease and the various treatments--psychotherapy, electroconvulsive shock treatments, drug therapy--offered to Lowell as medical knowledge evolved. Mania has a long cultural and scientific history, which the author recounts in fascinating detail. Her focus, though, is on Lowell, who was first hospitalized in 1949; subsequent episodes recurred throughout his life, often requiring monthslong hospital stays. Lithium allowed him longer stretches of stability, but Jamison believes it dampened his creativity. Unfortunately for the narrative--and surely for Lowell--the onslaught and course of illness repeat the same trajectory: "the mind leaps; speech rushes; words ribbon out fast, unbidden, cutting. Ideas and schemes proliferate, alliances shift." Lowell suffered grandiose delusions, hallucinations, religious mania, and impetuous love affairs, much to the dismay of his second wife, the writer Elizabeth Hardwick. Jamison offers chilling testimony of these episodes from Hardwick, Lowell's friends, and his doctors, and she mines Lowell's poetry and letters for his own responses. The author insists, as she has done in previous books, that mania corresponds to artistic brilliance and intellectual prowess; manic patients display "enhanced memory and originality"; biographical studies of individuals of "creative eminence" reveal a high rate of mental disorders; and students who perform exceptionally well in music and language "were four times more likely to be hospitalized later for bipolar disorder" than were average students. Similarly, records of 20 "socially important families" revealed that they were "saturated with manic-depressive psychosis." Jamison argues persuasively that mania fueled Lowell's poetry, but her celebration of psychosis seems to romanticize an affliction that she presents as devastating. A deeply informed investigation of a poet's suffering and creative triumph.

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Starred review from February 15, 2017
Robert Lowell (191777) was the most admired and analyzed American poet of his era. He suffered from manic depression, and it defined his life and work. He's the perfect subject for Jamison's (Nothing Was the Same, 2009) superb examination of manic depression and its influence, for good and ill, on creativity. Jamison, a psychiatrist, has authored several books that have advanced the understanding of mental illness for the general reader; this one is informed by both her training and her authorized access to Lowell's medical records. This is more study than biographyreaders particular about chronology should keep a biographical sketch of Lowell at hand. Surveying the writings of Lowell's New England ancestors, she finds abundant evidence of manic depression. She traces the arc of Lowell's multiple manic episodes: early bursts of inspired language, chaos as he spiraled out of control, depressions that drowned the creative spark, and heroic efforts to keep working despite it all. Her chronicle of the disease's impact on Lowell's family and friends will resonate with anyone with a loved one suffering from the illness. Jamison has created a landmark analysis of the disease that molded a brilliant man, and an immensely moving book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2016

MacArthur Fellow Jamison, a Johns Hopkins professor of psychiatry whose best sellers include An Unquiet Mind, chronicles major American poet Robert Lowell's forthright showdown with bipolar illness by drawing on unprecedented access to Lowell's medical records, previously unpublished drafts and fragments of poems, and conversations with his daughter. Clarifying the relationship between mental illness and creativity.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.