SOURCE: "Puritanism Versus the Old Green Gods: New England in the Poetry of Robert P. Tristram Coffin," in Colby Library Quarterly, Vol. VII, No. 4, December, 1965, pp. 136-50.

In the following essay, Wees argues that in its celebration of the male connection to a primal, natural power both destructive and sexual, Coffin 's poetry reveals the poet's revolt against New England Puritanism.

New England—Maine, in fact—dominates the poetry of Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Like Emily Dickinson, Coffin tried to "see New Englandly." For a poet to so limit his subject matter and point of view, to be so provincial, does not necessarily limit the richness of his work: witness the poetry of Dickinson, herself, and Coffin's contemporary, Robert Frost. Although Dickinson and Frost preferred to make their poems complex, ambiguous and symbolic, and experimented with sound and rhythm patterns, while Coffin tended toward a more open and...