Edwin Arlington Robinson bio

Born in Maine and educated for two years at Harvard, Edwin Arlington Robinson lived much of his life in New York City, where he worked at odd jobs, including a time with the subway authority. He never married and had few friends. For his earliest poems, written during the 1880s, he fell under “the influence of Thomas Hardy's rather gloomy novels of individual tragedy” (none of Hardy's poetry was published in book form until 1898, by which time Robinson's style was already formed). Robinson's early books were not successful, but for the last twenty years of his life he was among the most honored American poets, receiving three Pulitzer Prizes. Two of Robinson's most well-known poems, "Miniver Cheevy" and " Mr. Flood's Party ", are typical of Robinson's strongest sort of verse: “quick, incisive sketches of the blighted lives of those who may once have had some promise of talent or enterprise but who wind up doomed to small-town misery.”

Robinson also wrote philosophical poems and, in his last years, specialized in Arthurian narratives, including Merlin, Lancelot, and Tristram. After his death, Robinson's reputation suffered something of an eclipse, but many older and younger poets—including Robert Frost, James Dickey, and James Wright—have borne witness to Robinson's continuing power. He was also one of the best American sonnet writers, forming a bridge between Longfellow and Frost in a continuous tradition of sonnets peculiarly suited to the idiom and landscape of New England.

Poem
Miniver Cheevy
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born, And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold Would set him dancing.
Miniver sighed for what was not,

And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, And Priam's neighbors.
Miniver mourned the ripe renown That made so many a name