Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson's writing is very pessimistic and cynical. Instead of writing about what a person can do to make their life better, he writes about what it is that people do wrong. There is very little in his most famous two peoms that really relates to Transcendentalis at all. He writes about the common aflictions people have in their own lives, and how they are the cause of their own misery, while the Transcendentalists were not conscerened with that sort of thing.

In the poem Richard Cory, Robinson writes about a very rich gentleman who seemed to have everything going for him in his life, but for some crazy reason decided to kill himself. The theme of the poem seems to be that it is really rediculous to feel sorry for yourself when other people may have it so much worse than you. Transcendentalists write with great optimism about how great life can be, like in Emerson's "Nature" (Wayne). Robinson seems to view life as some ordeal to get through with as little pain as possible, or at least that is the most that can be gathered from the four stanza poem. There is a really big difference in the way the two writers feel about life in general.

Another big difference between Robinson and Emerson is that Robinson does not seem too concerned with nature in the least. Nature is one of the subjects where, if a poem was picked at random, chances are that it would contain some refrence to nature in it. Robinson's peotry is strange in that there is no refrence to nature in it, which, come to think of it, might have something to do with why his out look on life is so pessimistic. Emerson thought that nature was what kept a person all good and moral inside, and without any connection to it life got all misterable and junk. Thinking about it, the lack of nature might be why Robinson has such depressing poetry.



Robinson, Edwin Arlington. "Richard Cory." Poemhunter.com. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/richard-cory/.

Wayne, Tiffany K. "Nature." Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson:A
Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Chelsea
House Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.Web. 15 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.aspItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin=CCRWE0289&SingleRecord=True.