"By far the most famous poet of his era . . . Lowell transformed American poetry." --Charles McGrath, The New York Times Magazine

"Robert Lowell was one of the three or four greatest American poets of the twentieth century . . . his real peers are the classics of American literature: Melville and Whitman, Eliot and Frost . . . Lowell's torrential eloquence, his historical consciousness, his moral and political seriousness are a standing challenge." --Adam Kirsch, The Times Literary Supplement

"Lowell's genius and his grinding labor brought to verse in English not only technical mastery on a scale otherwise scarcely attempted in [the twentieth] century, but then his courage and honesty brought ... a new generosity and dignity to the whole enterprise of poetry." --John Thompson, The New York Review of Books

"The best American poet of his generation." --Time

"The subjects of these poems will eventually become extinct, like all other natural species devoured by time, but the indelible mark of their impression on a single sensibility will remain, in Lowell's votive sculpture, bronzed to imperishability." --Helen Vendler, The Atlantic Monthly