Life Studies

Life Studies

First edition
Author	Robert Lowell
Cover artist	Frank Parker
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Publication date	1959
Preceded by	The Mills of The Kavanaughs
Followed by	Imitations

Life Studies is the fourth book of poems by Robert Lowell. Most critics (including Helen Vendler, Steven Gould Axelrod, Adam Kirsch, and others) consider it one of Lowell's most important books, and the Academy of American Poets named it one of their Groundbreaking Books.Helen Vendler called Life Studies Lowell's "most original book." It won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1960.

Life Studies was first published in London by Faber & Faber. This was to allow for it to be entered for selection by the Poetry Book Society, one condition being that the first edition must be British. Because of the rush to release the book in Britain, the British first edition does not include the "91 Revere Street" section. The first American edition was published in 1959 by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy based in New York City.

Part I of the book contains four poems that are similar in style and tone to the poems of Lowell's previous books, The Mills of the Kavanaughs and Lord Weary's Castle. They're well-polished, formal in their use of meter and rhyme, and fairly impersonal. This first section can be interpreted as a transition section, signaling Lowell's move away from Catholicism, as evidenced by the book's first poem, "Beyond the Alps," as well as a move away from the traditional, dense, more impersonal style of poetry that characterized Lowell's writing while he was still a practicing Catholic and closely associated with New Critical poets like Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom. Notably, at a 1963 poetry reading at the Guggenheim Museum, Lowell introduced his reading of "Beyond the Alps" by stating that, "[the poem was] a declaration of my faith or lack of faith."