Robert Lowell
| Robert Lowell was a secret service propaganda writer. He was a member of the Boston elite (descendant of Founding Father William Samuel Johnson), and of RESIST with Allen Ginsberg, William Sloane Coffin, Norman Mailer and Noam Chomsky. His 3d wife was Caroline Blackwood Guiness, previously married to Lucian Freud, related to Diana Mitford Guinness. He was educated at St Mark School (like Ben Bradlee, Nicolas Brady, Franklin Roosevelt). |  |
He served in the US Naval Reserve. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
He was a friend of Delmore Schwartz (NY Intellectuals) who wrote for Partisan Review like Caroline Blackwood, and was the teacher of Lou Reed. Blackwood also published in Encounter of Irving Kristol and Stephen Spender.
During the Vietnam War he played a role in the fake anti-war movement.
Schwartz and RESIST members Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer were treated at Bellevue Hospital.
RESIST funded the Black Panther Party.
In 1964 Jonathan Miller directed Lowell's play The Old Glory with Frank Langella and Roscoe Lee Brown (Omega Psi Phi).
He taught at Harvard, The New School, Boston University and at the Iowa Writers Workshops, funded by Rockefeller Foundation and promoted by Henry Luce (S&B, Time). He was also funded by the Ford Foundation of John McCloy and awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
He was treated at McLean Hospital in Belmont Massachusetts (patients John Forbes Nash, Ray Charles, David Foster Wallace, Sylvia Plath, Susanna Kaysen) with lithium.
He was also treated at Payne Whitney Psychiatry Clinic of Jolyon West (MK Ultra) and Benjamin Spock (Scroll and Key), associated with Cornell University, like Marilyn Monroe, James Schuyler, Mary McCarthy and Lou Reed.
At Boston University he was the teacher of Anne Sexton, treated by MK Ultra doctor Martin Orne and Sylvia Plath.
His book Lifetime Stories contained odes to Schwartz and George Santayana (teacher of Walter Lippmann).
Plath, Sexton and Lowell were awarded the Pullitzer Prize.
born 3/1/1917.
died 9/12/1977.