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Bruce Clary's List: E. A. Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poets Life by Scott Donaldson < Books | PopMatters

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poetry criticism robinson_ea on 2009-03-30
- “Poetry is a language,” he said, “that tells us, through a more or less emotional reaction, something that cannot be said.”
- In the sonnet “George Crabbe,” Robinson composed a sort of epitaph for himself:
  
  Whether or not we read him, we can feel
  
  From time to time the vigor of his name
  
  Against us like a finger for the shame
  
  And emptiness of what our souls reveal
  
  In books that are as altars where we kneel
  
  To consecrate the flicker, not the flame.
- 1 more annotations...
- - unreconstructed Freudians will revel in Robinson’s drinking, his bachelorhood, his gloominess, his visits to brothels, even his perennial constipation.
Full text of "Nana"

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poetry criticism robinson_ea on 2009-03-30
- This sonnet gives completely and superbly the real and final
  justification for Zola. He was a great human event. He was a
  moralist in his strange, uncouth fashion. He saw life realisti-
  cally, perhaps a little astigmatically, but without illusions. He
  helped vastly to make it possible for literature to entertain a
  more virile attitude toward the less romantic aspects of life and
  to take cognizance of vice, crime, and the plagues of the under-
  world as material for sincere and truthful treatment. That
  is why many who were first repelled were later attracted by him.
On "Richard Cory"

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poetry criticism robinson_ea on 2009-03-30
- we know Richard Cory only through the effect of his personality upon those who were
  familiar with him, and we take both the character and the motive for granted as equally
  inevitable.
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- "Richard Cory" is perhaps the best-known example of his respect for
  the inaccessible recesses of man’s inner being . . .
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- 13 more annotations...
- - man as failure became
    for him a part of his cosmic view of the world he lived in.
  - the theme follows two patterns: one is the failure who seems
    to be beyond redemption, who does not, finally, possess the saving grace of
    character that would find favor in men's eyes, or who does not experience some
    inner change that would render less severe the general indictment against him.
    The other is the failure who for reasons of almost infinite variety is redeemed,
    exonerated, saved, or in whom the reader finds some aspect or some alteration of
    the inner man that lifts him from the shame of complete ignominy.
  - We read ill if we cannot see that Richard Cory is
    granted an oblique triumph at the end, for he has refused to suppose himself made happy by
    what "everyone" supposes will make him everyone happy. In short, Richard
    Cory’s self emerges neurotically perhaps; still it emerges triumphant over the
    imposed role of "success."
  - He sketches in Cory’s
    gentlemanliness and his wealth, but not his despondency, and he lets the suicide seal the
    identity of the man forever beyond our knowing or judging. On the other hand, he can
    characterize the chorus just because they lack individuality, and he invites us to judge
    their blindness on pain of missing the one sure meaning of the poem:
  - They do not serve who only work and wait. Those who count over what they lack and fail
    to bless the good before their eyes are truly desperate. The blind see only what they can
    covet or envy. With their mean complaining, they are right enough about their being in
    darkness, and their dead-gray triviality illuminates by contrast Cory’s absolute
    commitment to despair.
  - Yvor Winters to
    remark that "In 'Richard Cory' . . . we have a superficially neat portrait of the
    elegant man of mystery; the poem builds up deliberately to a very cheap surprise ending;
    but all surprise endings are cheap in poetry, if not, indeed, elsewhere, for poetry is
    written to be read not once but many times."
  - Because the people "went without the meat, and cursed
    the bread," it might seem that life was both difficult and meaningless to them. But
    difficulty is not to be equated with meaninglessness; in fact, Robinson is suggesting just
    the opposite. "Meat" and "bread" carry biblical overtones that remind
    us that man does not live by bread alone. It is "the light" that gives meaning.
    In opposition to meat and bread, symbols of physical nourishment and material values,
    light suggests a spiritual sustenance of greater value. As such it clarifies the intent of
    the poem, for it reveals the inner strength of the people and the inadequacy of Cory.
    Belief in the light is the one thing the people had; it is the one thing Cory lacked. Life
    for him was meaningless because he lacked spiritual values; he lived only on a material
    level.
  - The main problem with the popular interpretation is that it fails suitably to
    account for the tale being filtered through the mind of a narrator, a single one
    of the "people on the pavement." The resulting view tends to thrust
    Richard Cory into the spotlight and de-emphasize the character of the narrator.
    Perhaps we would do well to remember D. H. Lawrence’s admonition, "Trust
    the tale, not the teller," and begin to view Richard Cory through the eyes
    of an unreliable, unaware narrator. Moreover, such a focal point has the
    distinct advantage of helping to explain why Richard Cory really
    committed suicide.
  - Charles Burkhart remarks that their
    view of Cory is "a familiar illusion which brightens their drab
    lives."
  - Richard Cory’s suicide can thus be seen in a different light. Instead of
    suicide because of "inner emptiness"or "an absolute
    commitment to despair,"or because he was "sick,"we are presented with a case of regicide; the townspeople with some degree
    of consciousness have extinguished the light. The irony of the ending, then, is
    not that the people were endowed with greater values than Cory or that simply
    they failed to understand his message, or even that the light they sought glowed
    in their midst all the time. The irony is that through their own mental
    prejudices and unfounded exaggerations the people, like eagles, claw at
    Prometheus so that the chains of inhumanity imprison him forever; it matters not
    that it is Cory who pulls the trigger since the people have pointed a weapon at
    his temple.
  - "Richard Cory" is not a painting of a gentleman, but a portrait of the
    portraiteer. The poem serves as an indictment of those who study at a distance,
    of those who fail to get a feel of their subject, and of those who let petty
    personal emotions deprive themselves of human companionship.
  - The irony of these lines, and the poem as a whole, depends on the contrast between the
    serenity of Cory's appearance and the violence of his death; its melancholy, upon our
    recognising that Cory - for all his privileges - is as acutely isolated and spiritually
    starved as anyone else. 'There is more in every person's soul than we think', Robinson
    observed once, 'Even the happy mortals we term ordinary . . . act their own mental
    tragedies and live a far deeper and wider life than we are inclined to believe possible in
    the light of our prejudices'.
  - Quiet desperation, the agony that Richard Cory's neighbours failed to notice, is a
    distinguishing feature of many of Robinson's characters. The despair may come, apparently,
    from emotional poverty ('Aaron Stark'), the pain of loss and bereavement ('Reuben Bright',
    'Luke Havergal'), or the treadmill of life ('The Clerks'): whatever, it is palpably there
    in an awkward gesture, a stuttered phrase, a violent moment as in 'Richard Cory' or, as in
    'The House on the Hill', the sense that behind the stark, simple words lies an
    unimaginable burden of pain.
On "Miniver Cheevy"

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poetry criticism robinson_ea on 2009-03-30
- the contribution of form to effect is more
  obvious; and some analysis of these will throw light on the compositions that are more
  subtly contrived. In Miniver Cbeevy, for instance, the short last line with its
  feminine ending provides precisely the anticlimax that is appropriate to the ironic
  contrast between Miniver's gilded dream and the tarnished actuality:
  
  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 mediaeval grace
  
      Of iron clothing.
- "hold up some fragment of
  humanity for a moment’s contemplation"
- 4 more annotations...
- - one must ask why
    Miniver Cheevy (not Edwin Arlington Robinson) prefers an earlier, more
    "romantic" era than his own, what it is that he loses, if anything, by being out
    of phase with his time, and, finally, if his anachronistic attachment is virtuous or
    vicious.
  - Even though the general idea of "Miniver Cheevy" is clear, the reader who
    does not know what is meant by the expression "on the town" misses half of the
    humor and irony of the poem. To be "on the town" means to be supported by the
    town, a charity case. Miniver, in other words, is the town ne'er-do-well, the town loafer.
    The poem is built on the ironic contrast between the unheroic Miniver as be is and his
    dreams of adventure, romance, and art associated with heroic figures of the Trojan War in
    ancient Greece, King Arthur's knights in the Middle Ages, and the dazzling brilliance and
    corruption of the Medici in the Renaissance. What a great figure he might have been,
    Miniver reasons, had he been born at the right time. That he has not succeeded is not his
    fault; he uses the classic excuse: the world is wrong! But that in all likelihood he would
    not have achieved much at any time is made clear by the way Robinson handles his material.
    The sequence of verbs is used with telling effect: assailed, wept, loved, sighed,
    dreamed, rested ("from his labors!"), mourned, cursed, scorned. Mainly, what
    Miniver did was think. Added irony and humor come from Miniver's attempts to apply his
    "intellect" to his situation:
    
    Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
    
    And thought about it.
    
    Ordinarily two "thoughts" would have been sufficient to make a point; three
    "thoughts" would have emphasized the idea of real, intense thinking; but the
    addition of the fourth "thought" changes the tone of the stanza entirely, making
    it absurd. What all this thinking amounted to is indicated by the continuation of the
    sequence to its conclusion in the final stanza, where "thinking" is paralleled
    by "drinking" ("kept on thinking . . . "kept on drinking").
  - The name Miniver with its suggestion of the Middle Ages, patchwork royalty, and
    minuteness, coupled with the diminutive Cheevy, sums up his minimal achievement.
  - Miniver
    Cheevy was drawn to the past as he dreamed of Thebes and Camelot. He disliked
    the present, cursing the commonplace. But the crux of his difficulty was that he
    "scorned the gold he sought/ But sore annoyed was he without it." This
    was a succinct rendering of the dynamic which motivated much of Robinson's
    commentary on mankind's search for happiness.
On "The Mill"

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poetry criticism robinson_ea on 2009-03-30
- "The Mill" is more than a sad little tale of double suicide brought on by the
  encroachment of the modern world and by personal loss. The true subject is the enormous
  power of the creative imagination, which seizes the miller's wife in its fearful grasp,
  and many a reader along with her. The only thing we know for certain is the miller's
  words, and everything else depends upon them. Even the woman herself is called only the
  miller's wife, with no name or identity separate from his. As we know him by his words, we
  know her by her thoughts, and only by her thoughts, as we never catch the smallest glimpse
  of her. Robinson's subtle use of form seduces the reader into following the miller's wife
  into a depth of imaginative fear that has no grounding except the miller's one sad
  statement. She may get up, go to the tavern, and find him bemoaning his fate with Miniver
  Cheevy, having a good gossip about the strange end of Richard Cory. Or she may not. But
  there is little internal evidence that she has already found him hanging from a beam or
  has cast herself into the weir.
On "Mr Flood's Party"

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poetry criticism robinson_ea on 2009-03-30
- The main theme or point of "Mr. Flood's Party" is a consideration
  of the effects upon human experience of the passage of time. And to the
  elaboration of this theme virtually all of the major figures of speech or
  symbols in the poem are functionally and organically related, either directly or
  indirectly.
- in
  giving the name Eben Flood to his protagonist, Robinson created a
  sort of symbolic pun, which may be read either ebb and flood or ebbing
  flood. The former reading, ebb and flood, suggests a pattern of
  coming and going which proves to be basically related to the poem’s theme and
  is therefore the preferable reading; also, the latter reading, ebbing flood, has
  the additional disadvantage of an inherent self-contradiction since ebb and
  flood are opposite concepts. However, no matter which reading of the pun
  one prefers, there can be little doubt that in choosing such a name as Eben
  Food Robinson had in mind the common association between tide and time and
  perhaps even the familiar adage, "Time and tide wait for no man." Thus
  in naming his protagonist as he did, Robinson related his character both to the
  centrally significant pattern in the poem of coming and going; and to the poem's
  theme of the passage of time, which themselves are interrelated, of course.
- 5 more annotations...
- - Another symbolism carefully initiated in stanza one is that based upon the
    contrast between Mr. Flood's solitary house high on the hill and the community
    or town below. The main effect of the passage of time in the case of Mr. Flood,
    as in the case of many people, has been loneliness; time has taken away those
    with whom he had any meaningful associations. Symbolically, Robinson has
    identified this aloneness with the "forsaken" mountain top and the
    experience of human contact or communion with the populated valley below.
    However, the dramatic action of the poem takes place neither at the mountain top
    nor in the valley, but, as Robinson carefully points out in line two, between
    the two extremes. In keeping with this symbolic in-betweenness of location
    of the dramatic action, the experience of Mr., Flood's party is somewhere
    in-between the two extremes of absolute aloneness and communion with other
    humans, for after imbibing from his jug he has at least another Mr. Flood to be
    with.
  - The poet who had said that the "bird is on the
    wing"—in about the same figurative sense that Eben and Robinson meant
    that line—was Edward Fitzgerald in his translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar
    Khayyam, which also directly concerns itself with the effects upon man of
    time's passing. The lines from the Rubaiyat alluded to read as follows:
    "Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of Spring/Your Winter garment of
    Repentance fling:/ The Bird of Time has but a little way/ To flutter and the
    Bird is on the Wing." The reaction to the transience of temporal things
    expressed in these lines and repeatedly suggested elsewhere in the Rubaiyat is
    the philosophy of carpe diem, enjoy the day, make the most of this moment
    for the next moment may take all away. Mr. Flood in his party is grasping what
    few small pleasures he can from fleeting life; almost with the reader's
    approval, because of the sympathy evoked for his situation by Robinson's
    portrayal, he is adopting the philosophy of carpe diem. As in the other
    cases already examined, then, the symbol and metaphor inherent in the allusion
    to the Rubaiyat functionally implement Robinson's statement of theme.
  - the poem is not predominantly about death but rather about what Mr. Flood
    has left of life, which is very little. This heightened moment of communion with
    himself, artificially stimulated though it may be, is about as rich an
    experience as is now possible to Eben Flood.
  - The theme is the transience of life; the central symbol is the jug. Both the theme
    and the symbolic import of the jug are announced in the line "The bird is on the
    wing, the poet says," though only the theme, implicit in the image, is immediately
    apparent. Its relationship to the jug goes back to its source in the Rubáiyát of Omar
    Khayyám:
    
    Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
    
    Your winter-garment of Repentance fling:
    
    The Bird of Time has but a little way
    
    To flutter - and the Bird is on the Wing.
    
    Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
    
    Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
    
    The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
    
    The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
  - By
    the time that Roland blew his horn the last time, all his friends were dead; like Mr.
    Flood he reminisced about the past, and his eves were dim. Moreover, be had fought
    valiantly and endured to the end, and these attributes of courage and endurance are
    transferred to Mr. Flood. (The expression "enduring to the end" has a double
    reference behind it--it calls to mind the words of Jesus when he sent forth his disciples,
    "He that endureth to the end shall be saved," a statement that Browning said was
    the theme of his "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." The Roland allusion is
    even more subtle. The comparison is not to Roland blowing his horn in broad daylight and
    surrounded by the newly dead, but to the ghost of Roland, and the horn he is
    winding is a "silent horn." Roland, the last to die, is seeking his phantom
    friends. So is Mr. Flood. Lighted by the harvest moon glinting on the "valiant
    armor" of Roland-Flood, this is a world of the past, dim and mute. Fusion of figure
    and scene is complete. "Amid the silver loneliness / Of night" Mr. Flood creates
    his own illusory world with his jug.

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Bruce Clary

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Bruce Clary's List: E. A. Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poets Life by Scott Donaldson < Books | PopMatters

Full text of "Nana"

On "Richard Cory"

On "Miniver Cheevy"

On "The Mill"

On "Mr Flood's Party"

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