The Poetry of E.A. Robinson (Modern Library)

Donald Justice called Edwin Arlington Robinson "The first modern American poet." This original collection, edited by Robert Mezey, showcases many of Robinson's underappreciated shorter lyrics, with selections from The Children of the Night; Captain Craig; The Town Down the River; The Man Against the Sky; The Three Taverns; Avon's Harvest, Etc.; and Dionysus in Doubt.

Robert Mezey, a Guggenheim and NEA fellow, is poet-in-residence at Pomona College and the author of numerous volumes of verse, including Evening Wind. He provides a stimulating Introduction for this collection, together with extracts of Robinson's ideas about verse and criticism of his work. Robert Frost's Introduction to King Jasper is reproduced in full. Robert Mezey contends that E. A. Robinson is "a national treasure, one of the four or five best poets America has yet produced. . . . [He] wrote about ordinary people, old men who play cards and drink cider, unregenerate skirt chasers, village philosophers and cranks, butchers and millers and country doctors, maiden aunts, solitary drunks who have outlived their cronies--Americans suffering their irremediable woes."