Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet widely regarded as one of the most significant literary figures of the postwar era. Born into a prominent Boston Brahmin family with roots tracing back to the Mayflower, Lowell frequently drew upon his ancestry and contemporary family life as central subjects in his poetry. His upbringing in Boston deeply informed his work, with many poems set in the city and the broader New England region; literary scholar Paula Hayes has noted that Lowell, particularly in his early career, mythologized New England. Lowell identified Allen Tate, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Carlos Williams as his most direct poetic influences, describing the combination as unlikely but noting that Bishop served as a bridge between Tate’s formalism and Williams’s informal style. His own verse encompassed both formal, metered poetry and free verse, with some poems from *Life Studies* and *Notebook* occupying a middle ground. The publication of *Life Studies* in 1959, which won the National Book Award, marked a turning point: its intense, uninhibited exploration of personal, family, and psychological struggles led to his association with the confessional poetry movement, though much of his work blended public and private themes in ways that defied that label. Over his career, Lowell worked in a variety of stylistic modes. He served as the sixth Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1947 to 1948 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1947 and 1974, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977, and a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award in 1947. Biographer Paul Mariani described him as “the poet-historian of our time” and “the last of [America’s] influential public poets.”
- born
- November 15, 1943
- died
- April 3, 2019
- field
- English literature professor, author
- nationality
- American
- known_for
- Books on lyricists of the Tin Pan Alley era
Lore & Background
Furia's academic career began at the University of Minnesota's Department of English in 1970, where he served as department chair, associate chair, director of Undergraduate Studies, and associate dean for faculty of the College of Liberal Arts. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England (1976-1977) and a Fulbright Professor at the University of Graz, Austria (1982-1983). In 1994, he served as interim dean for the College of Arts and Sciences for Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Furia later became chair of the Department of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he was also director of the Film Studies Program, chair of the Department of Creative Writing, and interim Chair of the Department of Theatre. He was instrumental in creating both the creative writing department and the film studies program. Furia presented a weeknight segment on WHQR's The Great American Songbook with Philip Furia and hosted a daily radio program, 'The Great American Song Book' on WHQR. He was a founding member of the board of directors for Opera Wilmington. Furia died on April 3, 2019 in Wilmington, NC.
Reader's Guide
Furia's books include The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists (1990), Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist (1996), Irving Berlin: A Life in Song (1998), Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer (2003), America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley (2006, with Michael Lasser), and The Songs of Hollywood (2010, with Laurie Patterson). His writings on classic American popular songs have been praised in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and many other magazines. He was interviewed on Larry King Live!, NPR's All Things Considered, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, several PBS television specials, and other radio and television programs. His honors include a Fulbright Professorship (1982-1983), a Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Minnesota (1989), and being presented with the Key to the City of Savannah by Mayor Floyd Adams for writing Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer (2003).
Did You Know?
- Furia worked as a barker at Kennywood Park, an amusement park next to his childhood home in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, during his high school years.
- His MFA thesis from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop was titled 'Hunkies Eat Their Young'.
- Furia was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Graz, Austria, for the 1982–1983 academic year.
- He was presented with the Key to the City of Savannah by Mayor Floyd Adams in 2003 for writing 'Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer'.
- Furia was one of the founding members of the board of directors for Opera Wilmington.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Robert Lowell?
Robert Lowell (1917–1977) was an American poet from a storied Boston family whose ancestry reaches back to the Mayflower. He is celebrated for weaving raw personal experience—mental illness, marital strife, inherited guilt—into poems that also grapple with politics and history, and for helping shape the confessional poetry movement.
What major awards did Robert Lowell receive?
Lowell was a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry (1947 and 1974) and also took home the National Book Award in 1960. Those accolades solidified his standing as one of the defining American poets of the postwar decades.
How is Robert Lowell connected to confessional poetry?
Confessional poetry is a mid-century American trend in which writers treat their own psychological wounds, family dysfunction, and private obsessions as primary subject matter. Lowell is routinely named a central figure of that school, especially for collections that strip away the veneer of his privileged upbringing to expose depression, rage, and self-doubt.
What was Robert Lowell's family background?
Born Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV in Boston, he grew up in the old New England Brahmin class with a genealogy stretching to the Mayflower. That inherited status became a persistent source of tension in his verse, where he interrogated privilege, ancestral guilt, and the pressure of living up to a name.
How did Robert Lowell die?
Lowell was killed in a car crash in New York City on September 12, 1977, at the age of sixty. His well-documented battles with bipolar disorder and repeated hospitalizations make his death one of the most discussed and mourned episodes in twentieth-century literary biography.
More in Poets And Lyricists 1-24
Spotted an error? Know more?
This is a living reference — every entry is fact-audited, and reader corrections feed straight into our audit queue. Suggest an edit · See this site's audit record