Pulitzer Prize for Poetry Recipient. He was an American 20th century poet, who was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1947 and again in 1974. Born Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV, his New England heritage dates back to the "Mayflower" coming ashore at Plymouth Rock. His childhood was not easy. Following a family tradition, he studied at Harvard University for two years before turning from this tradition and transferring to Kenyon College in Ohio, graduating in 1940 with a degree in classic literature. He took graduate courses at Louisiana State University before the dawn of World War II. During World War II, he was sentenced for a year and a day in a federal penitentiary as a conscientious objector, serving five months of the sentence. He wrote about this experience more than once, for example, in the poem "Memories of West Street and Lepke." Twenty years later, he protested the Vietnam War, participating on the March on the Pentagon in 1967. After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he was hospitalized several times for this mental disorder when it was not controlled by medication. Not receiving much attention, his first book of poems in 1944, "Land of Unlikeness," was highly influenced by Lowell's conversion to Catholicism to the point of him being labeled the "Catholic Poet." This collection followed with "Mr. Edwards and the Spider" and "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket," which was written in honor of a cousin lost at sea during World War II. In 1947 at the age of thirty, he received the Pulitzer Prize for "Lord Weary's Castle," the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was appointed the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, serving from 1947 to 1948. In 1951 he published, "The Mills of the Kavanaughs." Taking a break from writing for almost a decade, he taught from 1951 to 1953 at a writer's workshop at Iowa University with other poets. Later over the years, he taught at Boston University, Harvard University, Yale University, and University of Cincinnati. During this time, he changed his traditional style of writing to a freer form and started to write more autobiography and confessional. His 1959 collection of poems, "Life Studies," was his fourth publication, considered by many his most famous, and earned the 1960 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977. In 1961 he published "Limitations," a collection of translated poems to English of works from non-English speaking poets. He abandoned further translation projects after his translations were met with negative reviews from some European critics, claiming the meanings of the poems were lost in his too freely translations. In 1964, he tried his hand at playwrighting with "The Old Glory," which was three one-act plays to be performed together as a trilogy, and was preformed off-Broadway in New York City. For this play, he received five Obie Awards in 1965 including an award for "Best American Play." With his popularity, his image appeared on the cover of "Time" magazine in June of 1967. In 1973 he published three collections of poetry: "History," "For Lizzie and Harriet" and "The Dolphin," which are said to be his summary of his three marriages. "Dolphin" received his second Pulitzer Prize in 1974. With his three stormy marriages, he had a daughter with his second wife and a son with his third. He lived in England for a short time after his third marriage. His later style of poetry is composed in a more relaxed and conversational manner, at times returning to his more traditional style. He published his last collection of poetry, "Day by Day," in 1977. For this work, he received the $10,000 National Medal for Literature awarded by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and was awarded that year's National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. He served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1962 until his death. The collection of letters, "Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell" was published posthumously in 2008; Bishop was his 30-year professional colleague.