Robert Lowell

Robert Lowell (1917-1977) was an American poet and a cornerstone of the confessional poetry movement. His 1959 book, Life Studies, won the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in both 1947 and 1974 and was the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress for 1947 and 1948.

He won several other awards as well.

Lowell is an interesting figure in poetry because, despite his status as a key figure of confessional poetry, a great deal of his own poetry didn’t conform to the standards of confessional poetry.

His biographer, Paul Mariani called him “the last of [America’s] influential public poets.”

His impact on his contemporaries and modern poets is substantial and he heavily influenced Sylvia Plath.