Apart from his vocation for writing poetry, Robert Lowell apparently was born to keep psychoanalysts busy and intrigued. A legitimate Boston Brahmin and WASP, he was partly in revolt against his patrician background, partly chained to it and (though covertly) at heart rather proud of it. He was a conscientious objector in the second World War, which took genuine courage considering his social standing, and even went to prison for it; later he was strongly and vocally anti Vietnam. He was also an on off Catholic convert, which seems to have added to his inner confusion rather than bringing him emotional peace. Lowell was three times married, each time to a writer, and it can scarcely be a coincidence that all three of them took to drink; he fell in love with the regularity of a Hollywood actress, often with girls much younger than himself. As with many American writers of his generation, he swung between academia and bohemia, almost always in a mess or in personal crises in which he usually managed to involve his friends. In that, of course, he was typical of other poets who were his friends - Rocthke, Berryman, Randall Jarrell. He and Elizabeth Bishop were close to one another over many years, and though Lowell was intensely competitive with most contemporaries, she appears to have been the exception. Among his many talented students were Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I doubt if Lowell has still the standing he had 30 years ago, but this is an excellent portrait not only of a gifted, hag ridden poet, but of a whole literary epoch and milieu.