September 7-14. Manic depression in "Waking in the Blue"

With Life Studies, Robert Lowell creates a new style of poetry, termed by M. L. Rosenthal to be confessional. Lowell uses intimate personal information and creates an autobiographical approach to poetry.
Manic depression, which was a recurring illness for Lowell, is present in the poem “Waking in the Blue,” which was published in Life Studies. Throughout the poem Lowell moves from feelings of great sadness and depression to possible happiness and humor. This form adheres to the basic symptoms of manic depression, emotions moving from elevated, mania, to depressive, and sometimes the appearance of both at the same time. At the beginning of the poem Lowell observes the night attendant and how he “catwalks” down the corridor of the mental hospital. Lowell begins the poem with a vision of youth, but his reminiscence quickly changes to the fellow institutionalized. Lowell states at the beginning of the second stanza, “What use is my sense of humor?” Here Lowell sees the inevitability of old age and expresses his humor cannot even save him. Lowell as well as Stanley, “hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties,” is sill trying to hold on to his youth, and the acclaim that their youth encompassed with the “bravado ossified young.”
In the final stanza of the poem Lowell again makes a transition from mania to depression. “After a hearty New England breakfast, / I weight two hundred pounds / this morning. Cock of the walk, / I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor’s jersey / before the metal shaving mirrors, / and see the shaky future grow familiar.” Lowell is mimicking the young night attendant and as he walks toward the shaving mirrors. After breakfast Lowell has an elevated mood, and expresses himself with the catwalk. Lowell’s mood is quickly deformed again into depression when he sees himself in the mirror and again fears the future and the realization of where he is, surrounded by “old timers,” like himself, and holding a locked razor, for fear of suicide is a concern for the institute’s staff.
The manic depression that Robert Lowell suffers from makes its way into his confessional poetry and his realization of his own problems. Through it you can see how he moves from periods of sanity and hope to the agonizing fear he has of himself.