The Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson

Three-time poetry Pulitzer Prize winner

Painting by Lilla Cabot Perry (1848–1933), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) was born in Head Tide, Maine, but grew up in Gardiner, Maine. Many of Robinson’s poems are set in the fictitious Tilbury Town — based on his boyhood home of Gardiner, Maine. He attended Harvard for two years and then worked for a time in New York. He spent the last 20 years of his life as a regular summer resident at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.

Robinson: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series)

One of Robinson’s most famous poems is “Richard Cory.” (Made into song by Simon & Garfunkle, and Paul McCartney). It is considered to be about his older brother, Herman, who married Edwin’s beloved, Emma Löehen Shepherd.

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
The people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich — yes, richer than a king —
And…