Richard cory author biography john
•
Analysis of Richard Corey By Edwin Arlington Robinson
1. Introduction
Edwin Arlington Robinson was a poet who was born on December 22, 1869. He was the third son of his family and was considered the black sheep. He came from a prominent and wealthy family, but he did not fit in with the rest of his family. This separates him from Richard Cory, the man that the poem is about. Robinson went on to attend Harvard, but he had to leave before graduating because of money issues. This was another issue that separated him from Cory, so Robinson most likely did not write this poem based on himself. Contrary to Robinson's life, Richard Cory was a man who was idolized by his town. The poem described him as "richer than a king," portraying Cory as a very wealthy man. He was also described as slim and "imperially slim," suggesting that he was a well-groomed man. All the men wanted to be him, and all the women wanted to be with him. They almost worshipped the ground he walked on. This brings abo
•
Richard Cory
Track:
Robinson’s famous triptych set to music by John Duke limns portraits of three men living lives of silent despair. Each has an autobiographical parallel in the poet’s own existence. The outwardly successful Richard Cory, who one day surprises his townsfolk by putting a bullet through his head, is a portrait of Robinson’s brother Herman, who effectively committed suicide with alcohol after a series of disastrous business investments, dying prematurely in 1893.
Miniver Cheevy, with his fatal Romanticism and self-destructive drunken passivity, again alludes to Herman, but also suggests the poet han själv , in his perennial sense of being unappreciated and misunderstood as an artist and intellectual.
Luke Havergal’s mourning of a dead love, and his epiphany that only through the western gate of death can there be true union of souls, is an aching hymn to Robinson’s passion for his sister-in-law, Emma Shepherd.
–Thomas Hampso
•
Richard Cory
E. A. Robinson 1897
Author Biography
Poem Text
Poem Summary
Themes
Style
Historical Context
Critical Overview
Criticism
Sources
For Further Study
First published in E. A. Robinson’s second book of poems, Children of the Night, “Richard Cory” is one of the short, lyrical and dramatic character sketches that Robinson fryst vatten now best known for, although during his life he was most famous for the long poems he wrote later in his career. Robinson created an imaginary place called “Tilbury Town,” which he peopled with various failed and frustrated people. Richard Cory is one of those people. The poem may be read as an ironic commentary on the American dream of wealth, success, and power. The very embodiment of that materialistic dream, Cory kills himself for some unspecified reason, perhaps a spiritual emptiness or alienation from his fellow human beings. His death leaves the people who wanted to be like him wondering about the purpose of life. The speaker, a rep