SOURCE: “Democracy and the Poet: Walt Whitman and E. A. Robinson,” in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. XXXIX, No. 2, Summer, 1998, pp. 267-80.

In the following essay, Trachtenberg discusses Robinson's response to the democratic ideals expressed in the poetry of Walt Whitman.

At certain moments in mid-career Edwin Arlington Robinson chose to play Cassandra to the nation: “Your Dollar is your only Word, / The wrath of it your only fear.” In the poem called “Cassandra” (1916), in “Demos” (1920), in “Dionysius in Doubt” and “Demos and Dionysius” (1925), he adopts an uncharacteristic hectoring tone, warns Jeremiah-like of a money-hungry power in the land prepared “To moronize a million for a few,” and decries the “Miscalled Democracy” in whose name the country has been ransomed to wealth, power, and mass-production. “All are niched and ticketed and all / Are standardized and unexceptional, / To perpetrate complacency and joy / Of uniform size and strength.” In 1872, in Democratic...