Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson ( born December 22, 1869 in Head Tide, Maine, † April 6, 1935 in New York) was an American poet.

Life

EA Robinson was his parents, Edward Robinson, operator of a timber trade, and Mary Elizabeth Palmer, born as the third of three sons. His mother was disappointed at his birth, as they would have liked to have had a daughter after two sons. Only after half a year he received his name. A visitor suggested " Edwin" before, and since this Mother's name well-liked, she sat as a middle name yet " Arlington " to the name of the place in Massachusetts, from which came the visitors. A short time later, after the father became successful with land speculation, the family moved to Gardiner (Maine), a city that appears as Tilbury Town in many of his poems.

His older brother Herman was intended to be a businessman and to manage the family fortune, the other brother, Dean, should become a doctor. He had the freedom to turn to poetry. At age eleven, he began to write regularly and during his high school days he attended the meeting as the newest member of the Writers Union of the city. While EA Robinson was keen to study the fundamentals of poetry, a claimed his contemporaries, he was one of those people you can not influence, and will go their own way.

EA Robinson studied from 1891 to 1893 at Harvard University, although his father doubted the value of higher education. During this time it started to go downhill with the assets of his family. 1892 his father died and in 1893 became the economy into a deep recession, the sluggish aftermath devoured the family fortune during the following seven years. E. A. Robinson was forced to leave Harvard. His mother died in 1896 of diphtheria. During this time, the poems were later published as The Torrent and the Night Before (1896) and The Children of the Night ( 1897) arose. They include psychological portraits of the inhabitants of Tilbury Town, whose innermost being he portrayed with great empathy and irony.

1897 Robinson moved to New York, where his band Captain Craig and other Poems (1902 ) met with little interest. 1910 appeared the band Town Down the River. His first major success was Robinson with The Man Against the Sky ( 1916), mainly philosophical poems, which have the limited nature of man and his search for the meaning of life to the subject. In addition, Robinson wrote a procedure based on the Arthurian legend three-part epic poem consisting of Merlin ( 1917), Lancelot (1920 ) and Tristram (1927, Pulitzer Prize 1928). Other pieces Robinson appeared in the volumes Collected Poems (1921, Pulitzer Prize 1922), Roman Bartholomew (1923 ), The Man Who Died Twice (1924, Pulitzer Prize 1925) and Matthias at the Door ( 1931).

In Gardiner he was the great love of his life, Emma Shepherd, back. He had met her when he took dance lessons, and found in her a friend with whom he could speak, and encouraged him to write. However, even though he loved her, he thought he could only either write or start a family. He introduced her to his brother Herman, who married her. It was not a happy marriage, burdened by financial problems and Hermans drunkenness. 1899 died Robinsons brother Dean, probably at an intended overdose of medication / drugs. Herman Robinson initially granted a small sum of money, but in 1901 it was this no longer possible.

EA Robinson decided to write in poverty, and lived from odd jobs and the charity of friends. But over time, he fell into depression, neglected his writing and began to drink heavily.

In 1905, he got some unexpected help. President Theodore Roosevelt's son Kermit had read The Children of the Night in the school and gave the book to his father also. This Robinson liked poems and he gave him a job in which he remained much time to write. He also gave the band out again and wrote an article about it in a magazine. Robinson now earned so much that he was able to support his brother Herman. But he was dissatisfied with his works written during this time. The major magazines remained closed to him despite Roosevelt's promotion, and when he left the White House in 1909 and one Robinson continued to observe regular working hours and to wear a uniform, he resigned his commission.

Back in Gardiner he was living with a friend and began round-the- clock work. He revised old poems and wrote new ones. He received excellent reviews and was called partly as a leading American poet.

In 1911, he began to spend his winters with friends in New York and summers on a farm in Peterborough, New Hampshire, on which the widow of a painter had set up an artists' colony. He stopped drinking and tried to write plays, but without success.

1916 Robinson received an anonymous donation. After Tristram had become a bestseller, he was for the first time completely financially independent. He surprised his friends with the care that he devoted his clothes and the generous help of other people in need. As a protest against the prohibition, as he said, he started drinking again. He spent his summer continues in the MacDowell Colony and the winter in New York - devoted entirely to writing.

He published regularly for the rest of his life.

Simon and Garfunkel's second album on Sounds of Silence Richard Cory is the song to hear, based on Robinson's poem of the same.

Awards

Robinson won three Pulitzer Prizes: