Around November 2022, I found out my spouse's old hometown actually had a used bookstore, where I picked up a copy of the Viking Portable American Literature Survey from the 1960s. Thumbing through it, I found the following poem:
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We 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 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.
A painting by Lilla Carbot Perry of this post's subject (from Wikipedia)
Despite being in countless literature surveys from at least the 1940s to the late 1980s, I had never actually read “Richard Cory” before and only knew of it as a (very different lyrically) Simon and Garfunkel song I heard once or twice. Reading it that first time, I appreciated the dark humor and how shocking it must’ve been when it was first published in 1897. So I needed to know more about the man who wrote it: Edwin Arlington Robinson.
To run down a quick biography, Robinson was born in Head Tide, Maine in December 1866 to a New England lumber magnate and his wife. The couple was angling for a girl and became disappointed to get another boy instead. Having no idea what to name him, they waited until a group of strangers on a vacation cornered them and drew random names out of a hat, sticking the kid with Edwin (which he apparently hated) [1]. This would just be one of many things Edwin would come to hate from his self-described “stark and unhappy” childhood.
Further researching paints Edwin as being an archetypal member of The Society for Sickly Sensitive Boys. His father moved the family to Gardiner, Maine when he was around four in order to accept a directorship at the local bank. Edwin, despite his family being rich, was recorded as attending public schools and seemed to do mostly fine. The problems primarily lay with conflict with Dad, who had little patience for the arts and wanted his sons to go into science or business instead. Edwin’s older brothers seemed to fit this expectation better, as the eldest son Dean became a doctor and the middle son Herman (usually noted as the “handsome and charismatic” one) found some success in business. Edwin, on the other hand, often was seen as a gangly weirdo who translated Greek and Latin poets for fun and yell out words like “Nebuchadnezzar” or “Melchizedek” when not picking apples or stealing cigarettes. At seventeen, he appeared to become “violently excited over the structure of English blank verse” and obsessed over the poems of Robert Browning while using everyone he knew as the source of his own snarky verse.
Things just kind of plodded along for Edwin as he got older. His dad sent him to Harvard for college due to being nearby a medical facility that could treat one of his son’s illnesses. Edwin instead used that time to write poetry for local publications and collect rejection slips in return. Once his father passed away, he then returned home to Gardiner to run the family farm and became close to his brother Herman’s wife, Emma Loehen Shepherd.
This relationship also provides clues to a frustrating thing about Edwin. If he were alive today, he’d most likely be referred to charitably as a “fuckboy.” While he was close friends with her, Edwin seemed to pine hard for Emma, enough for him to propose several times after Herman died of tuberculosis [2] despite her insisting it was never going to happen. After one too many shoot-downs, he then left Gardiner for good and pressed forward with his ambitions as a poet.
After he left home, the following events then happened to ol' Ed:
He self-published his first book The Torrent and The Night Before by paying 100 dollars (about $3,561.55 today) for 500 copies. He provided copies to reviewers, who seemed to generally like it but found much of it too grim.
He meant for his first book to surprise his mother, but she died of diphtheria before it was finally published.
Friends of his had to persuade Houghton Mifflin to publish his second book. Reviews were less enthusiastic. He drank heavily and couldn't hold down steady work during this time.
He made important friends with the family of Laura E. Richards, a children's book author and patron of Gardiner's public institutions. He preceded to flirt heavily with her daughters and somehow inspired her oldest son to pass a copy of Edwin's poetry to Kermit Roosevelt, who became a huge fan.
Kermit Roosevelt also happened to be the son of then-President Teddy Roosevelt, who also became a huge fan of Edwin's and gave him a steady job at the New York Customs Office until 1905. Good thing too - Edwin was an alcoholic and homeless much of his time while living in New York City...
Edwin continues to publish more poetry and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry three times in 1922 (the first one ever awarded), 1925, and 1928.
He eventually got cancer in early 1935 and was hospitalized until his death on April 6, 1935.
He never married but had an "intense relationship" with a woman named Elizabeth Sparhawk Jones throughout the years.[3]
After he died, the poet Amy Lowell (who's incredibly interesting herself) was quoted saying “Edwin Arlington Robinson is poetry. I can think of no other living writer who has so consistently dedicated his life to his work.” Despite my lack of poetic bona fides [4], I figure that this statement probably isn’t seen as an accurate statement these days [5]. Robinson could still be seen as a great poet, though, despite his work's unfashionableness and the creepiness of his behavior when looked at through a modern lens.
So after being rather dour on him [6], why would I still recommend reading his poems? Because like I just said: he's still a great poet overall.
When I read "Richard Cory" for the first time, I remember laughing out loud once I got to the end. Robinson is known for being pessimistic himself and most of his work carries around a dark humor that's kind of jarring to read from the late 1800s. I usually associate that time period with really flowery, overly verbose, and melodramatic language. Robinson feels like the other American Realists that we're pushing back against that shit, similar to Frank Norris or Stephen Crane. He was still able to work within rhyming structures and formal meters but it never feels stilted or forced. He remained blunt but somehow eloquent too.
I suspect he won't get a revival in interest anytime soon but if you have some time, I highly recommend the poems posted below (aside from "Richard Cory", which is quoted in full at the start).
End notes are presented below after the last poem listed, "The Sheaves".
"Miniver Cheevy"
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.
Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.
Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam’s neighbors.
Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.
Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.
Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediæval grace
Of iron clothing.
Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.
Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.
"Mr. Flood's Party"
Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:
"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.
Drink to the bird." He raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will."
Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.
Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,
And with his hand extended paused again:
"Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!"
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.
"Only a very little, Mr. Flood—
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do."
So, for the time, apparently it did,
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang—
"For auld lang syne." The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below—
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.
"The House on the Hill"
They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.
Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.
Why is it then we stray
Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,
And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.
There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.
"Luke Havergal"
Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal,
There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,
And in the twilight wait for what will come.
The leaves will whisper there of her, and some,
Like flying words, will strike you as they fall;
But go, and if you listen she will call.
Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal—
Luke Havergal.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies
To rift the fiery night that’s in your eyes;
But there, where western glooms are gathering,
The dark will end the dark, if anything:
God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,
And hell is more than half of paradise.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies—
In eastern skies.
Out of a grave I come to tell you this,
Out of a grave I come to quench the kiss
That flames upon your forehead with a glow
That blinds you to the way that you must go.
Yes, there is yet one way to where she is,
Bitter, but one that faith may never miss.
Out of a grave I come to tell you this—
To tell you this.
There is the western gate, Luke Havergal,
There are the crimson leaves upon the wall.
Go, for the winds are tearing them away,—
Nor think to riddle the dead words they say,
Nor any more to feel them as they fall;
But go, and if you trust her she will call.
There is the western gate, Luke Havergal—
Luke Havergal.
"The Sheaves"
Where long the shadows of the wind had rolled, Green wheat was yielding to the change assigned; And as by some vast magic undivined The world was turning slowly into gold. Like nothing that was ever bought or sold It waited there, the body and the mind; And with a mighty meaning of a kind That tells the more the more it is not told.
So in a land where all days are not fair, Fair days went on till on another day A thousand golden sheaves were lying there, Shining and still, but not for long to stay— As if a thousand girls with golden hair Might rise from where they slept and go away.
End Notes
[1] His middle name “Arlington” was given in honor of where the woman who drew the name out of the hat came from (Arlington, Massachusetts).
[2] For all of Edwin’s troubles, his brothers seemed to have it worse in the end. Dean became addicted to laudanum while treating himself for neuralgia and died of an overdose in 1899. Herman not only had to deal with tuberculosis but also had a string of business failures and became an alcoholic. One of the reasons behind Emma’s rebuffing of Edwin’s proposals – aside from him being obnoxious – was her belief that “Richard Cory” was actually a mean-spirited attack on Herman and his troubles.
[3] And if this wasn't enough for you, there's a 700-page biography out there that's all about his life and work: Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet's Life by Scott Donaldson. There's also the Bloom's Critical Views volume on Robinson and a volume from the Univ. of Minnesota Pamphlets of American Writers written by Louis Osborne Coxe (1962), which I've posted below as a download:
[4] Full disclosure: Putting together the facts of his life and laying it out for you was the easy. The harder part is dealing with what's more important - talking about his actual poems. Due to my basic ignorance, I’m not able to write solid criticism about poetry with any confidence yet. My focus as an English major during the mid-2000s was predominately on running literary analysis on novels and essays. Anytime poetry would come up, I’d turn my nose up at it and deemed it a waste of my time. It’s too flowery, it’s too short, it’s just a bunch of worthless versifying.
I didn’t appreciate the nuances until I got into my mid 30s and I’m still new to the whole world of poetry in front. I don’t have the tools in my critical thinking kit to make helpful insights on how the verses are constructed or whether the meter is used correctly. I can’t make those judgements without looking like a bigger pretentious ass than I already do...
[5] I find Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, or Robert Frost stronger examples from around that time, not to mention Lowell herself, Langston Hughes, or a number of other poets from the early 20th century.
[6] Which feels appropriate when talking about him, actually...