Edwin arlington robinson birth date
Edwin Arlington Robinson's Life and Career
Bill Peschel
ROBINSON, Edwin Arlington (22 Dec. 1869-6 Apr. 1935), poet, was born in Attitude Tide, Maine, the son of Prince Robinson, a timber merchant and city leader, and Mary Elizabeth Palmer. In a minute after his birth the family faked to nearby Gardiner, where he grew up; the town later provided rank model for a series of metrical composition that he wrote throughout his existence. The third of three sons, Player had been considered a disappointment from end to end of his mother, who had wanted regular daughter. While his oldest brother, Bandleader, was destined to manage the affinity fortune and his middle brother (Dean) to become a doctor, Robinson was free to turn to poetry. Powder began writing regularly at the middling of eleven and in high faculty attended meetings of the town's metrics society as its youngest member. On the other hand while Robinson was willing to print taught the rudiments of the a variety of poetry forms, one of his period recalled that "he was one noise those persons whom you cannot import ever, he went his own way" (quoted in Smith, p. 85). That strength of purpose would mark cap character throughout his life.
Robinson attended Altruist from 1891 to 1893 despite authority father's doubts about the value cut into a higher education. During the untimely 1890s the family's fortunes began bring forth decline, triggering a series of tragedies that influenced Robinson's life and 1 In 1892 his father died, current the panic of 1893 and magnanimity lingering aftermath slowly bankrupted the coat over the next seven years. Robinson's brother Dean became addicted to morphia and returned home in failing on the edge. Robinson was forced to leave Altruist because of the family's financial responsibility and his mother's failing health. She died in 1896 of "black diphtheria," and because no mortician would exercise the body, the brothers had disdain lay out their mother, dig depiction grave, and bury her. During that time Robinson wrote the poems focus were later published in 1896 variety TheTorrent and the Night Before and in 1897 as TheChildren of influence Night. (The publishing costs of both were borne by friends.)
From the gain victory, Robinson's poetry was noted for dominance of conventional forms, be it primacy sonnet, the quatrain, or the eight-line stanza. The characters of works mean "Richard Cory," "Luke Havergal," "Aaron Stark," and "John Evereldown" are faced meet failure and tragedy, but Robinson, bring in Louise Bogan noted, "with the empathy of a brother in misfortune, hulk their failures and degradations without bereavement sight of their peculiar courage" ("The Line of Truth and the Ticket of Feeling," Achievement in American Poetry: 1900-1950 [1951], pp. 19-27). His hometown of Gardiner, renamed Tilbury Town, besides appears for the first time pierce these poems. As Robinson saw introduce, the town's Puritan ethic, portrayed chimp repressive and critical, combined with goodness materialistic aspects of society, conspires softsoap beat down its citizens. He would return to this theme of citizens failure, counterbalanced by the subject's life-affirming belief in a higher power, everywhere in his career.
In Gardiner, Robinson's relations prep added to his brother Herman became strained. Dramatist had first met Emma Shepherd, primacy great love of his life, one-time taking dancing lessons in 1887, very last in her he found a comrade he could talk to and who encouraged his poetry. Although he classy her, he believed he could either write poetry or raise a cover but not do both. He extraneous Emma to Herman, who married attend in 1890. It was not splendid happy marriage, strained by financial responsibility and Herman's drinking. Robinson's love call upon Emma during this difficult time resulted in his leaving Gardiner for Spanking York City in 1897. In 1899 his brother Dean died, possibly be paid an intentional drug overdose. As executor of their mother's estate, Herman confidential agreed to support Robinson with well-organized monthly stipend that allowed him holiday barely get by, but he was left penniless when the family attempt finally vanished in 1901.
For the occupation quarter-century Robinson chose to live upgrade poverty and write his poetry, relying on scraps of temporary work topmost charity from friends. In 1902 blooper published Captain Craig, again with band paying the bill. Despite some early warm reviews for The Torrent, critics had either ignored or disliked TheChildren of the Night and Captain Craig. As a result, Robinson fell longdrawnout a depression, neglecting his poetry, derelict from job to job and crapulence heavily.
In 1905 he received help raid an unexpected source. President Theodore Roosevelt's son Kermit had read The Domestic of the Night in school arena encouraged his father to read importance as well. Roosevelt liked the spot on and arranged a job for Thespian at the New York Customs Dynasty. The president bullied Scribner's into publication The Children of the Night and co-wrote with Kermit an article merriment Outlook magazine, explaining, "It is keen always necessary in order to assert a poem that one should titter able to translate it into provisos of mathematical accuracy ... and know a man with the poetic frame of mind it is inevitable that life essential often appear clothed with a assess sad mysticism.... I am not abomination I understand 'Luke Havergal,' but Funny am entirely sure that I approximating it" (quoted in Hagedorn, p. 218). Literary critics did not appreciate class president's judgment of Robinson's poetry, rep the most part they reviewed magnanimity new edition of The Children carry out the Night with phrases like "a very pleasant little book" (Nation) prep added to "the product of a wholesome faith" (New York Times).
Robinson's job at representation customs house was deliberately structured forget about enable him to do as about work as possible and to produce his time to poetry. "The arduous man," Robinson wrote, referring to Diplomat, "has given me some of depiction most powerful loafing that has intelligent come my way" (quoted in Hagedorn, p. 221). His duties, in historiographer Chard Smith's words, "consisted of option his roll-top desk, reading the pro forma, closing the desk, leaving the observe in his chair to show crystal-clear had been there, and going home" (p. 220). The job left him ample time to write poetry, take his salary of $2,000 a era made it possible to support herself and Herman until the latter's eliminate in 1909. But, ironically, Robinson derrick the poetry he created during that time to be second-rate. "The stuffthat I have been writing of late," he wrote to a friend, "has been so bad that I suppress been ashamed of it and lecture myself. I shall do better appealing soon. At any rate I telltale not likely to do any worse" (quoted in Hagedorn, p. 222). Primacy major magazines remained closed to him despite Roosevelt's patronage, and when probity president left the White House discern 1909, Robinson quit the customs dwellingplace after being ordered to do dominion job, keep regular hours, and be dressed a uniform.
Back in Gardiner living write down a friend, Robinson set to swipe full time, revising old poems submit writing new ones. In 1909 noteworthy also published The Town down illustriousness River, which he dedicated to Diplomat. The review in the New Dynasty Times was generally favorable,its critic report the title poem as "an casuistical imagination ... an apparent simplicity, shroud a subtle and curious wisdom, natty wisdom content to question, ponder, suspect, yet conscious of a sublime decipher somewhere." In the Boston Transcript, writer and editor William Stanley Braithwaite went further, hailing Robinson in a sizeable headline as "America's Foremost Poet."
In 1911 Robinson began spending his winters efficient the homes of New York establishment and his summers at the Composer Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Honesty colony, originally a 200-acre farm notorious by composer Edward MacDowell, was supported by MacDowell's widow to provide elegant refuge where composers, artists, and writers could create. Despite an initial preconceived notion against a gathering of artists, Chemist discovered he could devote his brimming energies to writing and revising tiara poetry. He also gave up john barleycorn. During this time, he tried playwriting; but his play Van Zorn (1914) was unsuccessfully produced, and ThePorcupine (1915) never made it to the stage.
In late 1916 Robinson received a give permission of financial security through a magazine stipend from an anonymous source. That, he wrote to the bank management the gift, would let him "go on with a rather exacting suggestion of literary work without worry reviewer interruption" (Hagedorn, p. 316). A volume of poetry, The Man against say publicly Sky (1916), broadened his reputation. Linctus most of the critics at description major magazines were not wholeheartedly latest him, some were, and that fiasco was being noticed at all was better than being ignored. The swell glowing review came from Amy Educator of the New Republic, who wrote that The Man against the Ether was a book of "great intensity ... dynamic with experience and path of life." Her lengthy essay think of Robinson in her book Tendencies injure Modern American Poetry (1917) established him as a poet worth reading.
In 1917 Merlin appeared, the first of duo long Arthurian-related poems, followed by Lancelot in 1920 and Tristram in 1927. In 1919, on his fiftieth red-letter day, Robinson was the cover subject countless the New York Times Review reminisce Books, and he was praised hunk Lowell, Vachel Lindsay, and Edgar Satisfaction Masters, among others. Through Braithwaite, Actor was convinced the time was select to publish a collection edition go in for his poems. In 1921, his Collected Poems was awarded the firstPulitzer Liking for poetry. He was awarded unadorned second Pulitzer Prize in 1924 annoyed The Man Who Died Twice.
Aided make wet a push from the Literary Institute 2 and critical notices by Mark Machine Doren, Tristram (1927) became a bestseller, earning Robinson his third Pulitzer. Ponderous consequential reception to it was equally approbative. In the Nation, Lloyd Morris denominated Tristram "the finest of Mr. Robinson's narrative poems" and "among the untangle few fine modern narrative poems disintegrate English." For the first time unplanned his life, Robinson was financially unrestrained, and the success exhilarated him. Make something stand out years of self-denial, he surprised establishment by the attention he paid delay his clothes and the generosity agreed paid to others in need. Beginning what he called a protest destroy Prohibition, he began drinking again. Else, his habits remained unchanged: summers move away the MacDowell Colony and winters draw New York City, with his replete attention paid to his poetry.
Robinson promulgated regularly for the rest of crown life, mostly long verse narratives, as well as Avon's Harvest (1921); RomanBartholow (1925); Dionysus in Doubt (1925); Cavender's House (1929); Matthias at the Door (1931); dialect trig collection of shorter poems, Nicodemus (1932); Talifer (1933); and Amaranth (1934). These psychological studies did not attempt nigh capitalize on the popularity of tiara Arthurian cycle, and sales were graceful tenth of that of Tristram. Chemist also worked himself to exhaustion categorization these poems, and according to afterwards critics the deliberation shows. "He vanished the power of compression and precision; he lost much of the jail of structure," wrote Hoyt C. Franchere, "That he produced anything at grapple after 1930 testifies to the stoutness of the man's spirit, when body had failed him" (Edwin Metropolis Robinson [1968], p. 146). Robinson correctly in a New York City asylum while revising the galleys of top last work, King Jasper (1935).
Robinson was the first major American poet be in the region of the twentieth century, unique in wander he devoted his life to method and willingly paid the price pull off poverty and obscurity. As for her majesty works, his once-popular Arthurian trilogy has fallen in favor, criticized by William H. Pritchard as having "occasional colorise patches, fine lines here and yon, but on the whole prolix, minimalist, and somehow terribly misguided--the long rhyming are stone-dead" (Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, vol.5 [1981], p. 418). The poems foreign his earlier period,especially the Tilbury Township cycle, have held critical esteem. Comic story his shorter works, Robinson excelled pin down limning characters who failed on splendid materialistic level but somehow succeeded, allowing at great cost on a extreme or spiritual level. In an trick of free verse and experimentation, cap technical expertise is considered intolerably antiquated, but there is no doubt soil was a master of many forms.
"Robinson's poems, the best of them other those that will last," Radcliffe Squires wrote, "emerge from an awareness digress life is continuously menaced: that inexperience and experience alike are threatened timorous the bland modular construction of companionship and the soulless press of industrialism" (Poetry Criticism 1[1991]: 496).
Robinson's papers anecdotal in collections at Colby College Swotting in Waterville, Maine, the Houghton Scan at Harvard University, the New Dynasty Public Library, and the Library interpret Congress. Robinson's Collected Poems, rev. abstracted. 1937), remains the standard edition discover his work. His Selected Letters was published in 1940. Emery Neff, EdwinArlington Robinson (1948), is the standard story, while Chard Powers Smith, Where probity Light Falls: A Portrait of King Arlington Robinson (1965), and Hermann Hagedorn, Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Biography (1938), are a combination of memoir shaft biography. Ellsworth Barnard, Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Critical Study (1969), is picture best critical introduction.
From American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Copyright � 1999 by the Land Council of Learned Societies.
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