As a youth, Lowell had a penchant for violence and bullying other children.
Describing himself as an 8½-year-old in the prose piece "91 Revere Street," Lowell wrote that he was "thick-witted, narcissistic, thuggish".
As a teenager, Lowell's peers gave him the nickname "Cal" after both the villainous Shakespeare character Caliban and the tyrannical Roman emperor Caligula, and the nickname stuck with him throughout his life.
Lowell would later reference the nickname in his poem "Caligula," first published in his book For the Union Dead and later republished in a revised sonnet version for his book Notebook 1967–1968.

Lowell received his high school education at St. Mark's School, a prominent prep school in Southborough, Massachusetts.
There he met and was influenced by the poet Richard Eberhart, who taught at the school, and as a high school student, Lowell decided that he wanted to become a poet.
At St. Mark's, he became lifelong friends with Frank Parker, an artist who later created the prints that Lowell used on the covers of most of his books.

Lowell attended Harvard College for two years.
While he was a freshman at Harvard, he visited Robert Frost in Cambridge and asked for feedback on a long poem he had written on the Crusades; Frost suggested that Lowell needed to work on his compression.
In an interview, Lowell recalled, "I had a huge blank verse epic on the First Crusade and took it to him all in my undecipherable pencil-writing, and he read a little of it, and said, 'It goes on rather a bit, doesn't it?'
And then he read me the opening of Keats's 'Hyperion,' the first version, and I thought all of that was sublime."

After two years at Harvard, Lowell was unhappy, and his psychiatrist, Merrill Moore, who was also a poet, suggested that Lowell take a leave of absence from Harvard to get away from his parents and to study with Moore's friend, the poet-professor Allen Tate who was then living in Nashville and teaching at Vanderbilt.
Lowell traveled to Nashville with Moore, who took Lowell to Tate's house.
Lowell asked Tate if he could live with him and his wife, and Tate joked that if Lowell wanted to, Lowell could pitch a tent on Tate's lawn; then Lowell went to Sears, Roebuck to purchase a tent that he set up on Tate's lawn and lived in for two months.
Lowell called the act "a terrible piece of youthful callousness".

After spending time with the Tates in Nashville (and attending some classes taught by John Crowe Ransom at Vanderbilt), Lowell decided to leave Harvard.
When Tate and John Crowe Ransom left Vanderbilt for Kenyon College in Ohio, Lowell followed them and resumed his studies there, majoring in Classics, in which he earned an A.B. summa cum laude.
He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year and was Valedictorian of his class.
He settled into the so-called "writer's house" (a dorm that received its nickname after it had accrued a number of ambitious young writers) with fellow students Peter Taylor, Robie Macauley and Randall Jarrell.

Partly in rebellion against his parents, Lowell converted from Episcopalianism to Catholicism; however, by the end of the forties, he would leave the Catholic Church.
After Lowell graduated from Kenyon in 1940 with a degree in Classics, he worked on a master's degree in English literature at Louisiana State University and taught introductory courses in English for one year before the U.S. entered World War II.
As a youth, Lowell had a penchant for violence and bullying other children. Describing himself as an 8½-year-old in the prose piece "91 Revere Street," Lowell wrote that he was "thick-witted, narcissistic, thuggish". As a teenager, Lowell's peers gave him the nickname "Cal" after both the villainous Shakespeare character Caliban and the tyrannical Roman emperor Caligula, and the nickname stuck with him throughout his life. Lowell would later reference the nickname in his poem "Caligula," first published in his book For the Union Dead and later republished in a revised sonnet version for his book Notebook 1967–1968.
Lowell received his high school education at St. Mark's School, a prominent prep school in Southborough, Massachusetts. There he met and was influenced by the poet Richard Eberhart, who taught at the school, and as a high school student, Lowell decided that he wanted to become a poet. At St. Mark's, he became lifelong friends with Frank Parker, an artist who later created the prints that Lowell used on the covers of most of his books.
Lowell attended Harvard College for two years. While he was a freshman at Harvard, he visited Robert Frost in Cambridge and asked for feedback on a long poem he had written on the Crusades; Frost suggested that Lowell needed to work on his compression. In an interview, Lowell recalled, "I had a huge blank verse epic on the First Crusade and took it to him all in my undecipherable pencil-writing, and he read a little of it, and said, 'It goes on rather a bit, doesn't it?' And then he read me the opening of Keats's 'Hyperion,' the first version, and I thought all of that was sublime."
After two years at Harvard, Lowell was unhappy, and his psychiatrist, Merrill Moore, who was also a poet, suggested that Lowell take a leave of absence from Harvard to get away from his parents and to study with Moore's friend, the poet-professor Allen Tate who was then living in Nashville and teaching at Vanderbilt. Lowell traveled to Nashville with Moore, who took Lowell to Tate's house. Lowell asked Tate if he could live with him and his wife, and Tate joked that if Lowell wanted to, Lowell could pitch a tent on Tate's lawn; then Lowell went to Sears, Roebuck to purchase a tent that he set up on Tate's lawn and lived in for two months. Lowell called the act "a terrible piece of youthful callousness".
After spending time with the Tates in Nashville (and attending some classes taught by John Crowe Ransom at Vanderbilt), Lowell decided to leave Harvard. When Tate and John Crowe Ransom left Vanderbilt for Kenyon College in Ohio, Lowell followed them and resumed his studies there, majoring in Classics, in which he earned an A.B. summa cum laude. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year and was Valedictorian of his class. He settled into the so-called "writer's house" (a dorm that received its nickname after it had accrued a number of ambitious young writers) with fellow students Peter Taylor, Robie Macauley and Randall Jarrell.
Partly in rebellion against his parents, Lowell converted from Episcopalianism to Catholicism; however, by the end of the forties, he would leave the Catholic Church. After Lowell graduated from Kenyon in 1940 with a degree in Classics, he worked on a master's degree in English literature at Louisiana State University and taught introductory courses in English for one year before the U.S. entered World War II.
Robert Lowell