" the usual limits of understanding another’s mind are compounded when trying to understand Lowell, a man who thought in metaphor, lived in history, and whose mind was engaged in a restless, stupendously elaborate game of three-dimensional chess. Lowell’s mind was of a lurching, revising originality. "

― Kay Redfield Jamison , Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character