Waking in the Blue

"Waking in the Blue" is a poem by Robert Lowell that was published in his book Life Studies and is a striking, early example of confessional poetry. Of the handful of poems from Life Studies in which Lowell explored his struggles with mental illness, 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.