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Edwin Arlington Robinson
(1869-1935)
Edwin Arlington Robinson grew up in Gardiner, Maine.
Gardiner, which is located on the Kennebec River,
once was an active seaport. Robinson's father had
been a prosperous timber merchant, but after his
sudden death, the family found itself poor. Two of
Robinson's older brothers died at a young age, and
Robinson's mother passed away following a long and
painful illness. Robinson experienced a great deal of
emotional turmoil in Gardiner, and only returned to
the town he grew up in three times in later life. Two
of those times he came back to attend the funerals of
his brothers.
The Robinson family's dwindling fortunes caused
Edwin's college education at Harvard to be cut short
after only two years. Edwin moved to Greenwich
Village in New York shortly thereafter. During his
tenure in Greenwich, he was so poor that he often
could pack all his possessions into one suitcase. He
became renowned for showing great sympathy for those
who were dispossessed, lonely, and troubled.
Robinson's poetry, which was originally published
during the 1890's, fell prey to a disinterested
American audience. He was forced to pay for the
printing of his first two books, The Torrent and the
Night Before and The Children of the Night. Friends
of Robinson paid for the publication of his next
book, Captain Craig, and President Theodore Roosevelt
used his influence to effect the publication of a
fourth, The Town Down the River. Robinson's poetry
was awarded the Pulitzer Prize three times, in 1922,
1925, and 1928. During the 1920's, he was generally
regarded as the greatest living American Poet.
Most of Robinson's poems dealt with the townspeople
in a village known as Tilbury Town. Tilbury Town was
in fact a thinly disguised version of Gardiner,
Maine, the town in which Robinson grew up. The
fictional people of Tilbury Town reflected Gardiner
in that both were a land of suddenly diminished
opportunities, of large old-fashioned houses, and of
lonely dreamers who had once been prosperous and
happy. In general, Robinson's poems about Tilbury
Town are bitter, but they also represent a clearly
defined style and an astute appreciation of life's
ironies.
MAJOR WORKS:
The Torrent and the Night Before ( 1896 )
The Children of the Night ( 1897 )
Captain Craig ( 1902; 1915 )
The Town Down the River; A Book of Poems ( 1910 )
Van Zorn ( 1914 )
The Porcupine ( 1915 )
The Man Against the Sky ( 1916 )
Merlin ( 1917 )
The Three Taverns ( 1920 )
Lancelot: A Poem ( 1920 )
Avon's Harvest ( 1921 )
Roman Bartholow ( 1923 )
The Man Who Died Twice ( 1924 )
Dionysus in Doubt ( 1925 )
Tristram ( 1927 )
Sonnets, 1889-1927 ( 1928 )
Three Poems ( 1928 )
Fortunatus ( 1928 )
Letters of Thomas Sergeant Perry ( 1929 ). Modred: A
Fragment ( 1929 )
The Prodigal Son ( 1929 )
Cavender's House ( 1929 )
The Glory of the Nightingales ( 1930 )
Matthias at the Door: A New Poem ( 1931 )
Nicodemus: A Book of Poems ( 1932 )
Talifer ( 1933 )
Amaranth ( 1934 )
King Jasper: A Poem ( 1935 )
Hannibal Brown: Posthumous Poem ( 1936 )
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