Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire
A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character
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Narrated by:
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Jefferson Mays
About this listen
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • In this magisterial study of the relationship between illness and art, the best-selling author of An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison, brings an entirely fresh understanding to the work and life of Robert Lowell (1917-1977), whose intense, complex, and personal verse left a lasting mark on the English language and changed the public discourse about private matters.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry, Robert Lowell put his manic-depressive illness (now known as bipolar disorder) into the public domain, creating a language for madness that was new and arresting. As Dr. Jamison brings her expertise in mood disorders to bear on Lowell’s story, she illuminates not only the relationships among mania, depression, and creativity but also the details of Lowell’s treatment and how illness and treatment influenced the great work that he produced (and often became its subject). Lowell’s New England roots, early breakdowns, marriages to three eminent writers, friendships with other poets such as Elizabeth Bishop, his many hospitalizations, his vivid presence as both a teacher and a maker of poems—Jamison gives us the poet’s life through a lens that focuses our understanding of his intense discipline, courage, and commitment to his art. Jamison had unprecedented access to Lowell’s medical records, as well as to previously unpublished drafts and fragments of poems, and she is the first biographer to have spoken with his daughter, Harriet Lowell. With this new material and a psychologist’s deep insight, Jamison delivers a bold, sympathetic account of a poet who was—both despite and because of mental illness—a passionate, original observer of the human condition.
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One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, and The Times Literary Supplement
“Groundbreaking . . . A real contribution to the literary history of New England . . . A case study of what a person with an extraordinary will, an unwavering sense of vocation, and a huge talent . . . could and could not do about the fact that the defining feature of his gift was also the source of his suffering.” —Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker
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The noted research psychiatrist explores how life's disappointments and difficulties provide us with the lessons we need to become better, bigger, and more resilient human beings. Adversity is an irreducible fact of life. Although we can and should learn from all experiences, both positive and negative best-selling author Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal believes that adversity is by far the best teacher most of us will ever encounter.
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Book ruined by the narrator
- By David C. on 12-07-22
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Ted Hughes
- The Unauthorized Life
- By: Jonathan Bate
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 25 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Ted Hughes, poet laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter writer since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron.
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Phenomenal thanks to narrator!
- By equinox14 on 06-26-16
By: Jonathan Bate
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
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At the Existentialist Café
- Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"
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Consistent look at incoherent philosophy
- By Gary on 06-19-16
By: Sarah Bakewell
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On Elizabeth Bishop
- By: Colm Tóibín
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In this book novelist Colm Tóibín offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences - the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Tóibín creates a vivid picture of Bishop while also revealing how her work has helped shape his sensibility as a novelist and how her experiences of loss and exile resonate with his own.
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ELIZABETH BISHOP
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 05-19-16
By: Colm Tóibín
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Keats
- A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
- By: Lucasta Miller
- Narrated by: Sally Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Miller, through Keats’s poetry, brilliantly resurrects and brings vividly to life, the man, the poet in all his complexity and spirit, living dangerously, disdaining respectability and cultural norms, and embracing subversive politics. Keats was a lower-middle-class outsider from a tragic and fractured family, whose extraordinary energy and love of language allowed him to pummel his way into the heart of English literature; a freethinker and a liberal at a time of repression, who delighted in the sensation of the moment.
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A Romantic Life
- By David on 05-03-22
By: Lucasta Miller
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The Trip to Echo Spring
- On Writers and Drinking
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.
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Great Narration!!!!!! Great story about 20 Century make writer who suffer with alcoholism. If you like this topic and want more
- By Pamela Abbey on 04-25-21
By: Olivia Laing
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Becoming Faulkner
- The Art and Life of William Faulker
- By: Philip Weinstein
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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William Faulkner was the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, yet he lived a life marked by a pervasive sense of failure. Throughout his career, he remained haunted by his inability to master a series of personal and professional challenges: his less-than-heroic military career; the loss of his brother in an airplane crash; a disappointing stint as a Hollywood screenwriter; and a destructive bout with alcoholism.
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Miss.'s BCS-Bundren.Compson.Snopes/Sutpen/Sartoris
- By W Perry Hall on 05-01-14
By: Philip Weinstein
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Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Colm Toibin
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
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Eminently re-readable
- By Ellen-A on 01-02-19
By: Colm Toibin
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Zelda Fitzgerald
- The Tragic, Meticulously Researched Biography of the Jazz Age's High Priestess
- By: Sally Cline
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.
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The Beautiful and the Bungled
- By Silverthorne on 12-08-17
By: Sally Cline
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Melville in Love
- The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his "wicked book". Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale.
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intriguing
- By Jean on 06-18-16
By: Michael Shelden
What listeners say about Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael J. Kelley
- 05-22-17
The Perfect Combination
Would you listen to Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire again? Why?
Yes. The story itself is remarkable, and the poetry that is woven through the story is enhanced by the reading of it.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire?
The numerous examples of Lowell's courage "under fire"...that is, his ability to repeatedly return to his creative self after multiple attacks of mania and depression.
What about Jefferson Mays’s performance did you like?
His reading of Lowell's poetry was superb!
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
It made me realize what those with bipolar psychosis must deal with and what courage it takes to know that, even under therapy, this disease can come back into their lives without warning.
Any additional comments?
This was a tour de force by Dr. Jamison! She captured Robert Lowell's life, his creativity, his mental illness and his courage in one complex portrait. No biography that I have read has ever so accurately portrayed the essence of the two elements of creativity and mental illness in terms that a layperson or a medical professional could understand. Her feat was likely facilitated by her own experience with manic depressive disease. Her creative and empathetic writing is exhibited for all to enjoy in this amazing book!
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- W. T. Baker
- 03-01-18
Disappointing
Is there anything you would change about this book?
Mediocre writing from a Jamison, whose books I have enjoyed. Lowell's life is not particularly interesting from the outside, and there is nothing here Jamison hasn't covered. I am sorry I spent a credit on this book. I am a poet, and I have Bipolar 2.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 11-07-21
A Biographical Masterpiece
written with a remarkable capacity to combine tenderness with an attention to detail that Lowell would have wanted.
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- Cynthia Brideson
- 07-16-24
A treat for the mind and soul
I always love Kay Redfield Jameson’s work, but this one particularly touched me. I have rarely read such a well-rounded, graceful, and affectionate portrait of an artist. I now have a ton of books on my “to read” list by Lowell thanks to this biography!
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- Marianne
- 09-01-17
Fabulous and fascinating
Where does Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Although in many ways a tragic biography of one of Americas great poets, the reading is so intelligent and sensitive it makes the whole experience come to life
What other book might you compare Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire to and why?
dont know
Which character – as performed by Jefferson Mays – was your favorite?
robert Lowell
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
no
Any additional comments?
Jefferson Mays is a terrific reader
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2 people found this helpful
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- Whitney
- 02-25-19
The best biography I have ever read
This is an amazing book. Robert Lowell was a person who faltered, a lot. But also openly and honestly reflected on it with much sincerity and brutal truth. He lets us learn lessons through his life and therefore his work. His work was his life. Even if you aren’t interested in poetry I recommend this. Especially if you suffer from bipolar as I do. I felt like I was listening to the life of an old friend. I was brought to tears many times. Having mental illness, being able to relate to someone else who suffered with such close relation thanks to his openness is comforting. I was sad this ended.
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1 person found this helpful
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- malcolm harris
- 05-14-17
Amazing work incredibly well read.
Where does Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
One of the best.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Lowell, of course
Which character – as performed by Jefferson Mays – was your favorite?
Jefferson Mays was terrific, waspy, perfect for Jamison'sbook
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Total
Any additional comments?
Incredible insight into Manic depression affective disorder , its negatives and positives
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Overall
- Shelly Weiss
- 03-20-18
Repetitive. Had trouble following along.
Couldn't get into the reading flow because the content was so scattered. Not what I was expecting.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Lynn
- 12-04-21
Great
This is one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read. It really opened my eyes. After reading Red Comet, a biography of Sylvia Plath I decided to read this. After hearing Lowell was Plath’s teacher and inspiration. I suspect Plath may have suffered, like Lowell, from bipolar. I also read a biography of Jim Morrison who suffered with alcoholism. I suspect however he may have been bipolar too. Though neither he or Plath were ever diagnosed. I’m not a doctor I don’t know. Lowell was fortunate he was able to get diagnosed and treated for bipolar. And able to live longer than either Plath or Morrison.
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- Jordan
- 01-18-23
Brilliant!
Brilliant work, excellent reading, outstanding experience. I have been reading this author for years and this is just a continuation of her scholarly excellence.
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