Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character

A Pulitzer Prize Finalist 

In this magisterial study of the relationship between illness and art, the best-selling author of An Unquiet Mind brings a fresh perspective to the life and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Lowell. In his poetry, Lowell put his manic-depressive illness (now known as bipolar disorder) into the public domain, and in the process created a new and arresting language for madness. Here Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison brings her expertise in mood disorders to bear on Lowell’s story, illuminating not only the relationships between mania, depression, and creativity but also how Lowell’s illness and treatment influenced his work (and often became its subject). A bold, sympathetic account of a poet who was—both despite and because of mental illness—a passionate, original observer of the human condition.

• Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
• Life Studies and For the Union Dead (FSG Classics)
• Exuberance: The Passion for Life
• An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
• Collected Poems
• Nothing Was the Same: A Memoir
• Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
• New Selected Poems
• Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell
• Madness: A Bipolar Life