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Introduction
Edwin Arlington Robinson - Some Facts E. A. Robinson was born in 1869 and grew
up in Maine. He studied at Harvard as a From 1911 until his death in 1935, Mr. Robinson spent his summers at the MacDowell Colony, a community for composers, writers, and artists, in Petersborough, NH. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for the years 1922, 1925 and 1928. At the MacDowell Colony he was the object of devoted attention by several women although he maintained a solitary life and never married. His Tristram sold 58,000 copies the first year of its publication in 1927 and well over 100,000 copies before his death. It's been conjectured by Francis Murphy (E. A. Robinson, A Collection of Critical Essays) that he was the most popular selling poet because of his respectability and not his verse. In contrast to poets like T. S. Elliot and Ezra Pound, Mr. Robinson looked "substantial enough to trust." Edwin Arlington Robinson - Some Facts as I see Them Two early stories about E.A. Robinson tell a great deal about his possible view of the world. It's impossible to tell when young Edwin first heard about his naming, but I'm sure that he did. He must have heard from his parents that they were deeply disappointed that their third child was a boy. They waited over six months to name him and finally allowed a visitor to their home from Arlington, MA to pull a name from a hat. The fact that he was less than wanted did not lessen his lasting affection for his two older brothers. He fell in love with his older brother's wife and finally caused a great riff in his family that seemed to cause him to live a life closed off to further intimacy with other women. These early difficulties show up in many of his poems as a dark pessimism with "an American dream gone awry."
Mr. Robinson entered Harvard University as a special student. He took classes on English, French, and Shakespeare, as well as one on Anglo-Saxon. Mr. Robinson's first and last love was what he called "the music of English verse". As he explained, he was "a classicist in poetic composition", who believed that an accepted media for masters of the past should continue to be used for the future. However, he was not a mere imitator of English fashions and forms. Mr. Robinson was deliberately local: many of his poems are set in Tilbury Town, a fictive place based on his boyhood home of Gardiner, Maine. And he was a genuine original, obsessed with certain personal themes: human isolation, the tormented introversions of the personality, the doubts and frustrations of lonely people inhabiting a world from which God appears to have hidden His face.
President Theodore Roosevelt became a great admirer of E.A. Robinson. President Roosevelt's son gave the President a copy of The Children of the Night. The President became so enthusiastic that he wrote a review of the book to let the public know of its importance. The President did not totally understand "Luke Havergal", but he was entirely sure that he liked it; and it is said that he admired "The House on the Hill' and "Richard Cory".
Because of President Roosevelt's actions and endorsements Scribner's reprinted The Children of the Night and Mr. Robinson became the best selling poet in American history. It even helped to lead him to financial independence and the Pulitzer Prize. None of this changed Mr. Robinson or his routine of wintering in New York and his summers in the MacDowell Colony in NH.
Mr. Robinson never thought of himself as a teacher and he never gave a reading or delivered a public lecture. He felt compelled to write and he may have outwritten his themes. His later work sold very well but it did not have the same sharp writing that his earlier works have. His book, Tristam, sold 58,000 copies in its first year (1927) and well over 100,000 before Mr. Robinson died. It is suspected that it sold more for its respectability and not for its verse. It was Mr. Robinson's misfortune that he no sooner made his voice heard than the younger writers attacked it. T.S. Eliot dismissed him as negligible; William Carlos Williams thought the versification was pure stucco. No matter what one feels about the length and breadth of E.A. Robinson works, he left a legacy of truly American characters. Selected Bibliography - Poetry
© Harry Furness 2008 Send Harry a message either directly or using the Word Catalyst feedback form. For more from Harry visit the Word Catalyst archives or his online home; or frohawk. |
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Happy
Holidays (and to be un-pc: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year)...
This month I would like to open the door for a forgotten poet,
Edwin Arlington Robinson. In this day and age of the cult of
personality and publicists, E. A. Robinson would be seen as a
recluse. He was the most popular poet of his day. He is also
one of the biggest selling poets in American history. He won
a Pulitzer Prize and never spoke in public. He never taught a
course or gave a reading. He was the favorite of a president
and never left the northeast. He wrote character studies and
never mingled with people. E. A. Robinson is one of those poets
of conditions that I love and hope you will investigate.
special student and spent a few years at different jobs in Boston
and New York. Because President Theodore Roosevelt was introduced
to his poetry and enjoyed his pastoral descriptions, he helped
Mr. Robinson setting him up as a clerk in the New York Customs
House. Mr. Robinson left New York to devote all of his time to
writing in 1910 and joined an artist's community set up by Mrs.
Edward MacDowell.
From The Attic
Truly Calhoun
Cheshire Cat
Songs of