Robert Lowell on What It’s Like To Be Bipolar

Alongside clinical depression, it is also one of the most common conditions afflicting the artists who compose the long lineage ofthe relationship between creativity and mental illness. Among them was the great poet Robert Lowell (March 1, 1917–September 12, 1977), whose 1947 Pulitzer Prize made him one of the youngest recipients of the coveted accolade. The feat was followed by one of the most severe bipolar episodes in a lifetime with the disease, which first began bedeviling young Lowell decades before Bipolar Disorder was included in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and even before its progenitor, the term manic-depressive reaction, was coined in the early 1950s. With his uncommon poetic potency and mastery of language, Lowell has provided what is perhaps the most piercing account of what it’s like to live with this tragically common and woefully disorienting mental health disease.