Poetry
The Man Against the Sky
Edwin Arlington Robinson · 1916
Synopsis
Twenty-six pieces, opened by the portrait of Flammonde, a stranger who came from no one knows where to the small town of Tilbury, and closed by the long title poem, in which the poet sees a man climb a round hill alone at sunset and wonders what drives him on. Between the two, portraits: a woman who fears the husband she chose while the town comments, an old man who bears the shame of his two sons, a once-rich man now ruined who comes back every year to borrow, and the long monologue of a playwright about a colleague from Stratford.
Context
The volume was published by Macmillan in February 1916; several pieces had appeared in magazines, including Eros Turannos in Poetry. It at last brought recognition to a poet who had been publishing for twenty years, whom Amy Lowell hailed the following year in an essay. In it Robinson continues the gallery of Tilbury Town, an invented town based on Gardiner, whose inhabitants reappear from one collection to the next. Six years later, his collected poems would receive the first Pulitzer Prize for poetry awarded as such.
Who it is for
The short portraits can be read on their own; the blank-verse monologue and the title poem are more difficult. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
Hailed from its publication as his first major success; one critic regards it as his most important volume.
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