Volume 54, Number 19 · December 6, 2007
A Great Twentieth-Century Poet
By Charles Simic
Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet's Life
by Scott Donaldson
Columbia University Press, 553 pp., $34.95
Edwin Arlington Robinson: Poems
selected and edited by Scott Donaldson
Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, 254 pp., $12.50
How many readers of poetry today recognize the names of Edmund Clarence Stedman, William Vaughn Moody, Louise Imogen Guiney, Celia Thaxter, or Trumbull Stickney? There is no reason why they should, but they ought to have heard of Edwin Arlington Robinson. When he died in New York City on April 5, 1935, the New York Times editorial lamented the loss of 'one of the finest poets of our time...one who ranked with the great poets of the past.' Since then he's been nearly forgotten, although a few of his short poems like 'Richard Cory' and 'Luke Havergal' have continued to be included in anthologies and his many book-length narrative poems, including his best-seller Tristram, which sold 57,475 copies in 1927 and for which he received his third Pulitzer Prize, can still be found collecting dust in town libraries and used bookstores across this country.
Review, 4211 words
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