Edwin Arlington Robinson
Edwin Arlington Robinson (born December 22, 1869 in Alna , Lincoln County , Maine , † April 6, 1935 in New York City ) was an American poet .
Edwin Robinson was the son of a wealthy merchant and began to poetry early. He graduated from Harvard University and started publishing some poetry in local newspapers. Since he could not find a publisher, he published his first volume of poetry The Torrent and The Night Before in 1896 at his own expense. The volume received positive reviews, the two subsequent volumes (one at the publisher Houghton Mifflin) but not and Robinson got by in New York and on the East Coast with various jobs, where he also threatened to become alcoholic. The turning point came when his second volume of poetry, The Children of the Night, got into Theodore Roosevelt's hands (especially the poem Luke Havergal ), who liked it and convinced Scribner’s publisher to reissue the book. He also got Robinson a job at New York Customs, where he was employed until 1909.
In his poems he stuck to traditional forms and did not experiment with free forms like many of his contemporaries. His subjects were often gloomy and dealt with failure, unsatisfied life, materialism, artistic search and the need for change and are shaped by the atmosphere of small, still puritanic towns in New England (as in his Tilbury Town cycle, a small town, first mentioned in his poem John Evereldown from The Torrent and The Night Before and then in a number of other poems such as Captain Craig in the volume of poetry of the same name and Flammonde in his volume of poetry The Man against the sky ).
In 1922 he received the first Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his Gesammelte Gedichte and then the Pulitzer Prize two more times (1925 for The Man Who Died Twice for a street musician whose only musical stroke of genius is lost after a dissolute night and in 1928 for Tristram , the like other of his poems based on the Arthurian saga). In 1908 Robinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1927 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
The poetic success made him independent. In 1935 he got cancer. While still on his sickbed, he was working on his last book of poems, King Jasper .
He is buried in the family grave in Oak Grove Cemetery in Gardiner , where he also grew up.
literature
- Scott Donaldson: Edwin Arlington Robinson, Columbia University Press 2007
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Members: Edwin Arlington Robinson. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 22, 2019 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Robinson, Edwin Arlington |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 22, 1869 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Alna , Lincoln County , Maine |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 6, 1935 |
| Place of death | New York City |