Robert Lowell once remarked in a letter to Elizabeth Bishop that "you ha ve] always been my favorite poet and favorite friend." The feeling was mutual. Bishop said that conversation with Lowell left her feeling "picked up again to the proper table-land of poetry," and she once begged him, "Please ne[...]
These letters document the evolution of Lowell's work and illuminate another side of his life: his deep friendships with other writers, his manic depression, his marriages to three prose writers, and his involvement with the antiwar movement of the 1960s.[...]