The sheer size of what [Robert Lowell] did in verse exceeded the life work of any of his coevals, and I do not mean in bulk alone—also in scope and grasp and largeness of mind. Randall Jarrell instructed him, John Berryman rivaled him. Each was a masterly and inspired poet, but neither had quite his range over politics in the grand sense. (p. 10)

For 30 years Lowell continued from time to time to make a stir.

The trouble was that sometimes the stir accompanied or worsened into a crisis…. [After his first grave manic attack in 1949, Lowell] had to govern his greatness with his illness in mind. Life Studies were an early and extreme result of this kind of discipline and scaling down—poems obviously related to the studies he had been constrained to make of his own experience. For young writers here and abroad they showed a...