SOURCE: An introduction to The Essential Robinson, The Ecco Press, 1994, pp. 3-15.

In the following essay, Hall presents an appreciative overview of Robinson's life and works.

In 1869, Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in the village of Head Tide in Maine, third son and final child of Edward and Mary Robinson; his brothers Dean and Herman were twelve and four. Because his mother had wanted a daughter, Robinson began life as a disappointment; he went unnamed for half a year. When a summer visitor insisted that the six-month-old baby be named, “Edwin” was chosen by lot; the poet's middle name remembered the provenance of the visitor. As he grew up in Gardiner, where the family moved shortly after his birth, this poet of failure and defeat was known as “Win”; he preferred “Long Robinson” himself—at six-foot-two, he was tall for his generation—but his friends later settled for...