Edwin Arlington Robinson Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Edwin Arlington Robinson

One of the most prolific major American poets of the twentieth century, Edwin Arlington Robinson is, ironically, best remembered for only a handful of short poems. Aside from a few that he complained were "pickled in anthological brine"--"Richard Cory," "Miniver Cheevy," and "Mr. Flood's Party"--most of his work is not widely known. The 1,500-page collected edition of his work (1937) contains the twenty volumes of poetry published during his lifetime, including the thirteen long narratives which critics have ignored or denigrated but which he regarded as among his best work. Indeed, the long poems that occupied his energies during the last dozen years of his life were not designed for popular appeal, and his stubborn insistence on traditional forms at a time of extraordinary technical experimentation led to the critical attitude that his work is anachronistic, a throwback to the nineteenth-century triumphs of Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold. Such a view and the concommitant lack of interest in his work is unfortunate, for Robinson was a true innovator within the constraints of the traditional forms; his attitude, tone, and eclectic subject matter genuinely anticipate the main thrust of twentieth-century American poetry.

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