[Alan Sullivan]

Back on the previous thread, Jerry Jenkins disparaged Robinson as a formulaic poet. Well, sometimes, and not least in the anthology pieces, but there's a great deal more to E.A. than warhorses. I cannot recommend too highly the 1999 Modern Library edition, "The Poetry of E.A. Robinson," selected and introduced by Robert Mezey.

I had a hard time chosing a poem, until I discovered a startling resonance with the odd parenthetical remark about a miller in Frost's early draft of "Design." When I read "Make we no thesis of the miller's plight," I thought of "The Mill," one of Robinson's blackest poems, and I wondered whether Frost intended some peevish attack on a peer.

The timeline is tricky, if Frost had "In White" by 1912. "The Mill" appeared a bit later, in a book called "The Three Taverns." Still, it could easily have been circulated or published and come to Frost's attention. Perhaps one of our more scholarly members could clarify this point. Anyway, here is "The Mill."

The miller's wife had waited long,
The tea was cold, the fire was dead;
And there might yet be nothing wrong
In how he went and what he said:
"There are no millers any more,"
Was all that she had heard him say;
And he had lingered at the door
So long that it seemed yesterday.

Sick with a fear that had no form
She knew that she was there at last;
And in the mill there was a warm
And mealy fragrance of the past.
What else there was would only seem
To say again what he had meant;
And what was hanging from a beam
Would not have heeded where she went.

And if she thought it followed her,
She may have reasoned in the dark
That one way of the few there were
Would hide her and would leave no mark;
Black water, smooth above the wier
Like starry velvet in the night,
Though ruffled once, would soon appear
The same as ever to the sight.




[This message has been edited by Alan Sullivan (edited 08-24-2000).]

[Carol Taylor]

Robinson is my kind of poet. If I could write as he did I'd just do it and let critics all over the world analyze it. Robinson tells a story with subtle but unmistakable implication.

Carol

[Michael Juster]

Very dark and beautiful.

[This message has been edited by Michael Juster (edited 08-24-2000).]

[Alan Sullivan]

Tim Murphy says "Sometimes you put hundreds of decoys in the corn stubble, and no geese come." After the immediate flurry of response to "Design," I was hoping to lure some of you over to chat about Robinson. But maybe this poet is just too low-key for us post-moderns. And I chose, quite deliberately, a poem in which Robinson understates to an extraordinary degree. The verses slip past as quietly as smooth water, and one scarcely even notices that the subject is a double suicide. "The Mill," with its bland and sometimes hackneyed language, is the very opposite of Robinson's explicit and absurdly over-popular "Richard Cory." And it is also, I believe, the finer poem for its discretion and indirection, though it does not achieve the front rank of Robinson's work like "Mr. Flood's Party" or "Eros Turannos."
Alan Sullivan

[Julie]

I have long enjoyed Robinson's work, including the "absurdly popular" Richard Cory.

"The Mill" trips along the edge of coyness. The writing is smooth and attractive, though without the (would you label it obvious?) power of:

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.


Feh. Poems often become popular for a reason. That reason is rarely subtlety, but is often something that modern poets overlook: communicating something to the reader. I can't disparage Robinson for his abilities; both poems can attest to that.

------------------
Julie

[This message has been edited by Julie (edited 08-25-2000).]

[Alex Pepple]

I admit I’m not as familiar with Robinson’s work as say, Frost, but this is subtlety at its best -- an elegant treatment of a macabre subject. One thing to note is that his diction is not as relaxed (a means to his metrical precision) as Frost’s, & his technique is less direct. Talking about the possibility of Frost slurring a peer, I believe the miller in Frost poem refers to the miller moth. Of course, it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t an indirect device used to disparage Robinson.

Cheers,
…Alex.

[Jerry H Jenkins]

Whoa! I didn't claim EAR was formulaic - only that his work seems often to favor technique over substance. And, since I left the wiggle room of that disclaimer, I now claim the right to say that this is one of my favorites of his poems because of the mood it builds through allusion. I'll skip the possibility of poetic peevishness inherent in the timelines of his poem and Frost's and just go directly to EAR's excellent poem.

The rhetorical devices he employs in this poem bring it on stage quickly. There are almost no wasted words or expressions in the first stanza, a stanza which tells us immediately that something sinister pervades the poem. The miller, perceiving himself the last of a breed, projects the same poignance as that of the outcast and dying bull elephant going in solitary silence to the elephants' burial ground (a legend we would once believe with conviction and sympathy). The line "And there might yet be nothing wrong in how he went and what he said" makes the first stanza, defining the worrisome nature of the miller's absence and the probability that it's bad news.

The vague but unmistakable reference to the miller in terms such as those used in the last 4 lines of stanza 2 focus on the miller's transmogrified shape and presence, and the line 'would not have heeded where she went' shows that even in death the miller is aloof from the woman, preoccupied with his own aloneness, and suddenly casting her as the victim of his isolation.

The unruffled, unremarked act of her passing gives a finality to the poem that wraps miller, wife and their way of life in one cocoon. She dies as surely as the main participant in suttee, but more quietly, more desperately, and alone. Unlike Dylan Thomas's character, she does go gently into that long night, and with her passage, there truly are no millers anymore - not in fact, practice, memory or monument.

The poignant finality of this poem, its reference to a passing era, craft and culture, are similar to others of EAR's poems, and the reliance on that device impresses me as the hallmark of his poetry - the observation of a moment at the margin, and the observation of the individual whose death denotes the demise of empires as seen, vaguely and regretfully, through the lachrymose lens of EAR and the characters he brings to life - and death.

Jerry

[This message has been edited by Jerry H. Jenkins (edited 08-24-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Jerry H. Jenkins (edited 08-24-2000).]

[Alan Sullivan]

Julie, I think "Richard Cory" has been popular because people generally prefer the sensational to the understated. Of two poems on suicide, the one that ends "went home and put a bullet through his head" is bound to beat one that has no really memorable line. But there's another reason for the popularity of "Richard Cory." In this bravura propoganda piece, a normally apolitical poet makes a blatant appeal to class prejudice. Since the academic and literary world, then and now, tends to share that prejudice, the poem has been anthologized to death.

Thanks, Alex, for setting me straight on the moth. You're probably right, though Frost put it so oddly that I suspect he intended double entendre.

And Jerry, sorry if I paraphrased you a bit too broadly. I'm glad you like "The Mill." You've given a nice exegesis.

Alan Sullivan



[This message has been edited by Alan Sullivan (edited 08-25-2000).]

[Tim Murphy]

Mezey's brilliant intro to his new Selected brings such insight into Robinson's dark world that it lends new meaning to the phrase "It takes a village." North Dakota leads the nation in suicide and alcoholism, and many a downcast friend of mine would mutter "There are no farmers anymore." This poem is so spare, so stark that we have no "poetic image" until the final quatrain. How would the young Yeats, EAR's exact contemporary have written it?

Black water, smooth above the weir
Like starry velvet in the night,
Bore on its breast a woman's tear
Which vanished in the moonless night?

But Yeats would write nothing this powerful for many years.

As to class prejudice in "Cory," it's there, but only in the form of tender condescension. Robinson patronizes the rich by suggesting that old cliche, "poor little rich [man]."

Well, I don't know any rich people, but I have a sneaky suspicion they're about as happy (or un-) as the middle classes and the poor.

[This message has been edited by Alan Sullivan (edited 08-26-2000).]