Edwin Arlington Robinson
Edwin Arlington Robinson (December 22, 1869 – April 6, 1935) was an American poet and playwright. Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on three occasions and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.[1]
Edwin Arlington Robinson
December 22, 1869
Head Tide, Maine, U.S.
April 6, 1935 (aged 65)
New York City, New York, U.S.
- Poet
- playwright
1896–1935
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1922; 1925; 1928)
David S. Nivison (grandnephew)
Personal life[edit]
Robinson never married.[25] During the last 20 years of his life he became a regular summer resident at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, where several women made him the object of their devoted attention.[25] Robinson and artist Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones visited MacDowell at the same times over a cumulative total of ten years.[26] They had a romantic relationship in which she was in love with him,[27] devoted to him and understood him, and was relaxed in her approach with him; he called her Sparhawk and was courteous towards her.[28] They had a relationship that the poet D. H. Tracy described as "courtly, quiet, and intense".[28] She described him as a charming, sensitive, and emotionally grounded man with high moral values.[28]
Death and legacy[edit]
Robinson died of cancer on April 6, 1935, in the New York Hospital (now the Weill Cornell Medical Center) in New York City;[4] he was buried at Oak Grove Cemetery in Gardiner, Maine.[23] When Robinson died, Sparhawk-Jones attended his vigil and later painted several works in his memory.[28] The same month, a memorial ceremony was held at Gardiner High School, Robinson's old school.[4] In October of the same year, a monument was erected in Gardiner Common through the efforts of Robinson's friend and mentor Laura E. Richards, who raised the money for the monument from across the country; the Boston architect Henry R. Shepley provided the design, Richards wrote the inscription and Robinson’s biographer, Herman Hagedorn, was the keynote speaker.[29]
Robinson's childhood home in Gardiner was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971.[30] Robinson's grandnephew David S. Nivison, a noted expert on Chinese philosophy and Chinese history, was a trustee of Robinson's estate.[31]
