Robert Lowell was not known as a confessional poet, though many of his poems are autobiographical. Confessional poets' writings, such as Sylvia Plath and Lowell's good friend John Berryman (whose book Dream Songs I highly recommend if you are looking for "confessional poetry") tend to fall into the unstructured or chaotic realm, while Lowell was very much a formalist, usually writing in a set meter.

Read "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket" which can be found online. It is long but worth the effort and representative of the man's work.

I know he won the National Book Award at one point in his "career" which would lead me to believe he won others as well. He lived most of his life in New England and came from a family of some renown within the world of letters. It may be of some interest to note that while he was generally considered one of America's great Poets during his lifetime it was well known that he suffered from manic-depression, leaning towards the depressive side. A notorious drinker and probably egomaniacal, the man was a force of nature.