三次普利策奬的獲得者——埃德溫·阿林頓·羅賓遜（Edwin Arlington Robinson，1869—1935）曾經生活在紐約，“在一所凄涼的房屋五樓骯髒的小單間裏”，多年來從他的詩歌裏“一年從來沒有賺到100美元以上”。
Edward Arlington Robinson was born on December 22, 1869 in Head Tide, Maine. Although he was one of the most prolific American poets of the early 20th century—and his Collected Poems (1921) won the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to poetry—he is remembered now for a few short poems. Robinson was devoted to his art and led a solitary, often make-shift existence; he published virtually nothing during his long career except poetry. Amy Lowell, a contemporary of Robinson, declared in the New York Times Book Review, “Edwin Arlington Robinson is poetry. I can think of no other living writer who has so consistently dedicated his life to his work.” In books such as The Torrent and the Night Before (1896; reprinted 1996), Captain Craig (1902; 1915), The Man Against the Sky (1916), King Jasper (1935), and particularly through the well-known Tilbury Town cycle, Robinson established a recognizable set of thematic and technical concerns: “themes of personal failure, artistic endeavor, materialism, and the inevitability of change,” characterize much of his work, according to scholar Robert Gilbert. Robinson’s use of laconic, everyday speech while also adhering to traditional forms at a time when most poets were experimenting with the genre also made his poetry unique. “All his life Robinson strenuously objected to free verse,” Gilbert remarked, “replying once when asked if he wrote it, ‘No, I write badly enough as it is.’”