SOURCE: “Edwin Arlington Robinson: Knights of the Grail,” in The Inclusive Flame: Studies in American Poetry, Indiana University Press, 1963, pp. 53-78.

In the following essay, Cambon outlines the main characteristics of Robinson's poetry, particularly noting the unique aspects that set him apart from his contemporaries.

The gentleman from Gardiner, Maine, was an isolated conservative in a literary world that had seen the triumph of an aggressive Imagism. He refused to court public favor by joining the winners, and kept on writing, mostly in a narrative vein which, in the changed climate of American letters, seemed to be obsolete. In the deafening labyrinths of Manhattan he would walk like a shadow of his own characters besieged by time and enlightened by defeat—Captain Craig, Fernando Nash, Merlin, Lancelot, Ferguson.

Yet today, when a generation of careful craftsmen has succeeded yesterday's iconoclasts, and the New England voices of Robert Frost...