Edwin Arlington Robinson Essay Research Paper Robert

Edwin Arlington Robinson Essay, Research Paper

Robert Stevick said of Robinson s poetry that it deserves the attention it does not contrive to attract (Joyner 1). This statement concerning Robinson s poetry explains the very nature of that which the poet desired and dreaded. He desired to sell his poetry and for it to attract readers, but he desired even more so, that those reader s understand what they were reading. His frustrations in life were placed in his poetry. Indeed, his poetry is described as being fairly autobiographical. His existence and questioning of meaning in life became a key factor in his style. His pessimistic style was the result of his own sad life that he experienced. One of the best ways to gain understanding of a person s poetry is to learn about the person s life. Robinson was born in Maine in 1969. He was not named, however, until six months later by having a name taken from a hat. The lady who suggested the idea was from Arlington, Massachusetts. Therefore, his name became Edwin Arlington. It is reported that he questioned his own existence as early as the age of six. He attended two years at Harvard during which his father died. His Mother then died of black diphtheria. Three years after his brother Dean died after failing as a doctor. Six years later he received a letter from President Theodore Roosevelt complimenting his poetry. He later appointed Robinson to the office of the Collector of Customs, where he stayed employed for four years. Since his leaving of Harvard up to this point, he had kept jobs that provided little financial stability. Indeed, he did not experience financial security until his first Pulitzer Prize. During his time under Roosevelt s office, his brother Herman committed suicide after loosing everything in the 1890 s crash. He left behind A wife and three girls for Edwin to care for. In 1911, he began spending the summers at the MacDowell Colony where several other people of the arts came for peace. Some critics seem to think that Robinson was homosexual and used this Colony as a place to meet with homosexual friends freely(Dey 5). However, no such notion was ever presented by Robinson and is hard to support. In 1922, Robinson won the first of three Pulitzer Prizes. These kept him financially secure until his death in 1935 from cancer(Barnard 7). It is important to note that Robinson seemed to always feel insecure and out of date. He lived in unhappy circumstances for most of his life and watched other people s unfortunate lives as well. He desired to share the pain that he had seen and experienced through the form of his poetry. He especially desired for his reader s to understand what he wrote. Robinson was considered a people poet in that he wrote primarily about individuals and their relationships (Joyner 1). Due to his unfortunate circumstances, he wrote about the unsuccessfulness and hopelessness that he watched happening around him. He exhibits mixtures of irony, sympathy, and compassion for his characters. His characters are mostly failures or are unfortunate in some great form. Because of this, he is called a romantic existentialist (Joyner 1). Many of his poems are autobiographical, more so than their seeming objectivity indicates. He gathered inspiration for his tales from the tortured lives of both his families and acquaintances. Robinson set most of his fictional stories and tales in Tilbury Town. Apparently this town was an example of the American Dream gone wrong and a place where creative genius is destroyed by neglect and misunderstanding (Duke 1). IN most of his tales, he presents a person who deals with being misunderstood. As a result, they experience a lack of human connection with their community members, and eventually turn towards an alternative source to connect with. This community encompassed the subtle manifestations of his own psyche through the thinly veiled incarnations of his relatives and townsfolk. There are several examples of the people who inspired his writing. Richard Cory, probably his most popular poem, was meant to represent his brother Herman. Much like the character of Richard, Herman was outwardly successful and then one day puts a bullet through his head (Duke 2). Miniver Cheevy is in many ways autobiographical of Robinson as well as describes the drunkenness of his brother. Robinson often said that he was born at the wrong time. He is even noted for not conforming to the growing popular use of free verse. Instead he used that of traditional verse and experimented in French forms and noted as being one of America s greatest practitioners of the sonnet and the dramatic monologue (Joyner 1). He was also like Miniver in his desire to be understood and to live in a time where that was possible. Amusingly enough, while Robinson considered himself to be able to live in the past, critics consider him to be the first of the modernist movement in poetry (Joyner 2). The character of Luke Havergal s mourning of a dead love and his epiphany at the end that concludes that death is the true way to the uniting of souls is explained several ways. The first is that it is an agonizing hymn of Robinson s passion for his sister-in-law, Emma Shepherd. The second interprets it as describing his brother s love for her. Under the idea that Robinson was a homosexual, it suggests that Emma Shepherd is the woman a homosexual might have married had he been, in fact, straight (Dey 5). Of course, there are several inte