The publication recently of the letters between Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell and their circle, entitled “The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979”, turns a reader’s attention to both their time and his poetry. What comes across from the letters is that for all their passion and spontaneity, they are extremely mannered, the two people living up to their reputations as intellectuals of the age by existing on the tetterhooks of their perceptions, ever trying to squeeze out an insight or put a point so freshly that they will be complemented by posterity for their sensitivities. This is clear, for example, in a letter to Elizabeth Hardwick from 1970 in which Lowell is just making chitchat rather than talking about their finances or about emotional relationships, and so gives away a lot about how his mind works.