Robert Lowell
and Life Studies

In Robert Lowell and LIFE STUDIES, Terri Witek uses unpublished drafts of some of the most famous passages in Life Studies to show what happened when Lowell confronted his own identity problems as writing problems. Witek masterfully examines Lowell’s pattern of revising away from the vivid presences that had shaped his identity and his work toward a carefully negotiated position of poetic power. The book also treats the delicate maneuvering Lowell engages in as he moves into the next generation and presents himself as uneasy husband and father at the end of Life Studies.