'When he died, I felt that the Big Top of poetry had lost its central pole.' (Seamus Heaney)
At Robert Lowell's death in 1977, he was widely regarded as America's finest poet, indeed the finest in the language. His work had an astonishing range: from New England's puritan past, to the most intimate details of his own personal life, and the larger historical perspectives of modern America - Vietnam, the Presidency, wars and assassinations. This study of his life for the Lively Arts includes unique archive footage of Robert Lowell talking about his work and, above all, reading it. Many of his closest friends also pay tribute to the man Eugene McCarthy has called 'the poet of history in America'.