Volume 29, Number 19 · December 2, 1982
American Poet
By Helen Vendler
Robert Lowell: A Biography
by Ian Hamilton
Random House, 527 pp., $19.95
'In truth I seem to have felt mostly the joys of living; in remembering, in recording, thanks to the gift of the Muse, it is the pain.' This closing sentence in Robert Lowell's 'Afterthought' to Notebook will come to mind as readers finish this first biography of Lowell. In remembering, in recording, it is the pain that dominates. Lowell died five years ago, in September 1977; this admirable narrative of his life—which in some ways will probably not be superseded—has been written with skill and dispatch by Ian Hamilton, an English poet who knew Lowell well during Lowell's last years in England. Hamilton writes with the authority of personal acquaintance and personal sympathy, as well as with a different authority (rare in literary biographers)—the authority of one who reads Lowell's work with accuracy, understanding, and a sense of its technical interest.
Review, 3286 words
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