The Written Image

Robert Perkins is known for his storytelling. Born in Boston and classically educated at Milton Academy and Harvard University (AB 1974), he received an MFA from the Low Residency Writing Graduate Program at Bennington College in 2004. However, his true education began while spending his 19th year on Bowditch Hall, the men’s locked ward at McLean Hospital in Belmont MA. (see his book Talking To Angels). The trauma of this year was his key to a more authentic life, a key to following his dreams.

Three great poets taught at Harvard in the early 1970s: Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and Octavio Paz. For three years, they were his teachers. His father objected, saying he was paying for the education and wouldn’t I take a history, or economics course? On the other side, my mother (pictured at the right) supported my dreams whole heartedly. On my first one-on-one meeting with the poet, Elizabeth Bishop, she said, “You’re not a poet. What are you?” I said I wanted to be a painter. She said, “We’ll have to think of something to get you credit.” She wrote out her poem The Fish and offered it to me to illustrate. I went down the hall and asked Robert Lowell if he would give me something. We had lunch at the Iruna restaurant where he picked a piece of paper I’d brought and wrote out the opening lines of Man and Wife. Lowell laughed manically when he handed it to me, and said, “Have fun with that…” Lowell was in his fifties and I was in my twenties.

The Written Image was launched.

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