Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) Miniver Cheevy, Richard Cory LINKS University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative American Verse Project http://www.hti.umich.edu/english/amverse/ This site's "Bibliography to American Poetry" contains links to online versions of texts by many American poets, including Robinson's Children of the Night: A Book of Poems and Town Down the River: A Book of Poems. BIOGRAPHY Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) Robinson grew up in Gardiner, Maine, attended Harvard, returned to Gardiner as a free-lance writer, then settled in New York City in 1896. His various odd jobs included a one-year stint as subway-construction inspector. President Theodore Roosevelt, a fan of his poetry, had him appointed to the United States Customs House in New York, where he worked from 1905 to 1909. Robinson wrote about people, rather than nature, particularly New England characters remembered from his early years. Describing his first volume of poems, The Torrent and the Night Before (1896), he told a friend there was not "a single red-breasted robin in the whole collection." Popular throughout his career, Robinson won three Pulitzer Prizes (1921, 1924, 1927).