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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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