"Waking in the Blue" is a poem by

Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects i ...

that was published in his book ''

Life Studies ''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 ...

'' and is a striking, early example of

confessional poetry Confessional poetry or "Confessionalism" is a style of poetry that emerged in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It is sometimes classified as a form of Postmodernism. It has been described as poetry of the personal or "I", f ...

. Of the handful of poems from ''Life Studies'' in which Lowell explored his struggles with

mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...

, this poem was one of Lowell's most forthright admissions that he was mentally ill. Though he does not discuss the exact nature of his mental illness in the poem, he does describe his hospitalization in a mental institution. Lowell's admission of having spent time in a mental institution was considered a brave one to make when he published the poem in 1959, when public disclosure of mental illness was a serious social taboo.

Composition

Lowell wrote the first draft of the poem at the end of January

1958 Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third ...

while at the

McLean Hospital McLean Hospital () (formerly known as Somerville Asylum and Charlestown Asylum) is a psychiatric hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. It is noted for its clinical staff expertise and neuroscience research and is also known for the large number of ...

in Belmont near

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

. The title of that first draft was "To Ann Adden (Written during the first week of my voluntary stay at McLean's Mental Hospital)". Ann Adden was a "psychiatric fieldworker" whom he had met while he was a patient at the

Boston Psychopathic Hospital The Boston Psychopathic Hospital, established at 74 Fenwood Road in 1912, was one of the first mental health hospitals in Massachusetts, United States. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. The name was cha ...

the previous year. In a manic state, Lowell became temporarily convinced that he was in love with her. Hamilton, page 240 The first draft was formally loose. However, the final draft was 25 lines shorter and in places rhyme and snatches of regular meter were introduced to tighten up the poem.

Cultural references

* ''

The Meaning of Meaning ''The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism'' (1923) is a book by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. It is accompanied by two supplementary essays by Bronisław Malinowski and F. G. ...

'' is a book by the literary theorists

I. A. Richards Ivor Armstrong Richards CH (26 February 1893 – 7 September 1979), known as I. A. Richards, was an English educator, literary critic, poet, and rhetorician. His work contributed to the foundations of the New Criticism, a formalist movement ...

and

C. K. Ogden Charles Kay Ogden (; 1 June 1889 – 20 March 1957) was an English linguist, philosopher, and writer. Described as a polymath but also an Eccentricity (behavior), eccentric and Emic and etic, outsider, he took part in many ventures related to li ...

* The

Porcellian Club The Porcellian Club is an all-male final club at Harvard University, sometimes called the Porc or the P.C. The year of founding is usually given as 1791, when a group began meeting under the name "the Argonauts",, p. 171: source for 1791 origins ...

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

References

* Hamilton, Ian, ''Robert Lowell: A Biography'', Random House, New York, 1982. .

Footnotes

{{poem-stub American poems Works by Robert Lowell