Frank Bidart and David Gewanter have compiled a definitive edition of Lowell's poems, from the early triumph of Lord Weary's Castle, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, to the brilliant willfulness of his Imitations of Sappho, Baudelaire, Rilke, and other masters, to the late spontaneity of his History, winner of another Pulitzer, and of his last book of poems, Day by Day. The book will also include several poems never previously collected, as well as a selection of Lowell's intriguing drafts.

As poet and critic Randall Jarrell said, "You feel before reading any new poem of his the uneasy expectation of perhaps encountering a masterpiece".

Lowell's Collected Poems will offer the first opportunity to view the entire range of his astonishing verse.