Born in Alna, Maine, Edwin Arlington Robinson is considered to be one of the most important poets of the first half of the twentieth century, ranking with the likes of T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams. He spent his early years in Gardiner, Maine where by the age of twenty knew that “I was doomed, or elected, or sentenced for life, to the writing of poetry". Robinson came into the national spotlight when his book of poetry, Children of the Night came to the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt, who became an ardent supporter of Robinson. He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, Collected Poems (1922), The Man Who Died Twice (1925) Tristam (1928). In all Robinson published twenty-eight books of poetry and several plays in his lifetime.
