Orbler
Byron Twain
Brenton
Dexter
Jeanne Dininni
Shilpa KarhikEdwin Arlington Robinson
April 17th 2006 14:04
Today's poet is a genuine "starving artist". For a large portion of his life Edwin Arlington Robinson lived in self-imposed poverty and obscurity, focusing almost entirely on writing. Despite his life being beset by difficulties, his devotion paid off and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1922.
Although Robinson lived at the turn of the 20th century when poets were becoming more experimental, he stuck to conventional poetic forms like sonnets and quatrains. In this respect he has more in common with earlier English poets than with his American contemporaries. His subjects were often unfortunate people who were repressed or ruined by a materialistic society, and Robinson excelled at showing their inner strength and spirit, in a sympathetic but never condescending manner. I haven't read a lot of his work, but he is nevertheless one of my favourite poets - his combination of rigidly conventional style with down-to-earth, modern content is very effective and unique, and can make the frequently blunt and unpleasant endings to his poems quite startling, as in this, one of his most famous pieces of work (any Simon & Garfunkel fans will know the song based on it).
RICHARD CORY
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from head to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But he still fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--
and admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Thankfully, not all of his poems are as abrupt as that, or it might become quite depressing. My personal favourite, though it ostensibly has a similar end, is far more subtle. In fact, it took me two or three readings to understand what had happened, and I'm still not 100% sure - ambiguity is one of Robinson's trademarks and there are often underlying meanings to be found, beyond what seems obvious. In this poem, words like "if" and "would", rather than definites, make it unclear whether the poem is describing the actual event of a double suicide, or the miller's wife's fearful imaginations and conjectures, and gives you the same feelings of uncertainty as she can be supposed to be feeling.
THE MILL
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
The miller's wife had waited long,
The tea was cold, the fire was dead;
And there might yet be nothing wrong
In how he went and what he said:
"There are no millers any more,"
Was all that she had heard him say;
And he had lingered at the door
So long it seemed like yesterday.
Sick with a fear that had no form
She knew that she was there at last;
And in the mill there was a warm
And mealy fragrance of the past.
What else there was would only seem
To say again what he had meant;
And what was hanging from a beam
Would not have heeded where she went.
And if she thought it followed her,
She may have reasoned in the dark
That one way of the few there were
Would hide her and would leave no mark:
Black water, smooth above the weir
Like starry velvet in the night,
Though ruffled once, would soon appear
The same as ever to the sight.
Something more cheerful next time, I promise!
Although Robinson lived at the turn of the 20th century when poets were becoming more experimental, he stuck to conventional poetic forms like sonnets and quatrains. In this respect he has more in common with earlier English poets than with his American contemporaries. His subjects were often unfortunate people who were repressed or ruined by a materialistic society, and Robinson excelled at showing their inner strength and spirit, in a sympathetic but never condescending manner. I haven't read a lot of his work, but he is nevertheless one of my favourite poets - his combination of rigidly conventional style with down-to-earth, modern content is very effective and unique, and can make the frequently blunt and unpleasant endings to his poems quite startling, as in this, one of his most famous pieces of work (any Simon & Garfunkel fans will know the song based on it).
RICHARD CORY
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from head to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But he still fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--
and admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Thankfully, not all of his poems are as abrupt as that, or it might become quite depressing. My personal favourite, though it ostensibly has a similar end, is far more subtle. In fact, it took me two or three readings to understand what had happened, and I'm still not 100% sure - ambiguity is one of Robinson's trademarks and there are often underlying meanings to be found, beyond what seems obvious. In this poem, words like "if" and "would", rather than definites, make it unclear whether the poem is describing the actual event of a double suicide, or the miller's wife's fearful imaginations and conjectures, and gives you the same feelings of uncertainty as she can be supposed to be feeling.
THE MILL
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
The miller's wife had waited long,
The tea was cold, the fire was dead;
And there might yet be nothing wrong
In how he went and what he said:
"There are no millers any more,"
Was all that she had heard him say;
And he had lingered at the door
So long it seemed like yesterday.
Sick with a fear that had no form
She knew that she was there at last;
And in the mill there was a warm
And mealy fragrance of the past.
What else there was would only seem
To say again what he had meant;
And what was hanging from a beam
Would not have heeded where she went.
And if she thought it followed her,
She may have reasoned in the dark
That one way of the few there were
Would hide her and would leave no mark:
Black water, smooth above the weir
Like starry velvet in the night,
Though ruffled once, would soon appear
The same as ever to the sight.
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 - 1935)
Something more cheerful next time, I promise!
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