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'Life Studies' is the fourth book of poems by Robert Lowell, after ''Land of Unlikeness'', ''Lord Weary's Castle'', and ''The Mills of The Kavanaughs''.
''Life Studies'' was published in 1959 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, and won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1960. Many critics consider it Lowell's most important book and the Academy of American Poets named it one of their ''Groundbreaking Books.'' [1]
The book is in four parts. Part One contains four poems:

★ Beyond the Alps

★ The Banker's Daughter

★ Inauguration Day: January 1953

★ A Mad Negro Soldier Confined at Munich
Part Two is a long prose passage entitled "91 Revere Street"
Part Three contains four poems:

★ Ford Madox Ford

★ For George Santayana

★ To Delmore Schwartz

★ Words for Hart Crane
Part Four is titled "Life Studies" and consists of fifteen poems, the last is the well-known Skunk Hour.