Kay Jamison and Robert Lowell

Setting the River on Fire is a biography filtered through the poet’s illness—a further meditation on the links between “madness” and creative genius that Kay Redfield Jamison began in her 1993 book Touched With Fire.

Jamison had unprecedented access to Lowell’s medical records, as well as the personal experience with mania and depression to relate to his mood swings. She argues that the volcanic poetic outpourings of his highs were only polished to greatness by stern discipline during his lows—but also that his talent endured once his illness was brought under control.

Printed as “Back Chat: Kay Redfield Jamison”, Fall 2017

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