Robert P. T. Coffin

Robert Peter Tristram Coffin
Born March 18, 1892
Brunswick, Maine
Died January 20, 1955(1955-01-20) (aged 62)
Brunswick, Maine
Occupation poet
Nationality American

Robert Peter Tristram Coffin (March 18, 1892 – January 20, 1955) was a writer, poet and professor at Wells College (1921–1934) and Bowdoin College (1934–1955). He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1936.

Life

A native of Brunswick, Maine, and member of one of New England's oldest families, Robert P. T. Coffin grew up on his family's saltwater farm in the coastal town of Harpswell, where he's buried, and graduated from Bowdoin in 1915. He went on to earn graduate degrees from Princeton University (1916) and Oxford University (1920), where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is best known as the author of more than three dozen works of literature, poetry and history, including the book Strange Holiness, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1936.

His early poetry was derivative of classical forms (e.g., sonnets) and in verbiage and subject archaic. His mature poetry is marked by clarity of subject and symbolism, scanning and usually rhyming lines, and New England locales, persons (particularly farmers, fishermen, young boys, and old ladies), themes, and sometimes vocabulary and accent-based rhymes. He also wrote romantic prose.[1]

There is a public school in Coffin's birthplace of Brunswick, Maine, named after him. Coffin Elementary School opened in 1955, in his honor.[2] He dedicated his book "Captain Abby and Captain John" to fellow Bowdoin College alumnus L. Brooks Leavitt, "a fellow son of Maine." Coffin subsequently wrote his poem "Brooks Leavitt" as a eulogy to his old friend, which was read at Leavitt's funeral in Wilton, Maine. "Captain Abby and Captain John" is one of his most well-known works, and centers around the characters Abby and John Pennell, two 19th-century ship captains. A shipbuilding district in Brunswick, Maine, known as Pennellville, provided the inspiration for the book, as well as Coffin's shared lineage with the Pennell family.

Robert P.T Coffin was also a lifelong visual artist who illustrated many of his books in black and white drawings of great detail. The multifarious works describe the natural world of his beloved Maine, its flora and fauna set amidst whimsical architecture and personalized by stylized inhabitants involved in various activities apropos of the essays the art accompanies

Coffin died of a heart attack in Brunswick, Maine, on January 20, 1955, at the age of 62. He is buried in the Cranberry Horn Cemetery in Harpswell, Maine, where he grew up on his family's homestead.

Partial bibliography

Non-fiction

  • Book of Crowns and Cottages (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1925)
  • Laud, Storm Center of Stuart England (1930)
  • The Dukes of Buckingham, Playboys of the Stuart World (1931)
  • Portrait of an American (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1931)
  • Lost Paradise (Autobiography) (The Macmillan Co. New York, 1934)
  • The Kennebec: Cradle of Americans (Farrar & Rinehart, 1937) (First volume in the Rivers of America Series)
  • Maine Ballads (The Macmillan Co., New York 1938)
  • Primer for America (1943)
  • Mainstays of Maine (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1944)
  • Maine Doings (Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1950)

Fiction and poetry

  • Christchurch (Thomas Seltzer, New York, 1924)
  • Dew and Bronze (Albert & Charles Boni, 1927)
  • Golden Falcon (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1929)
  • The Yoke of Thunder (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1932)
  • Ballads of Square-Toed Americans (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1933)
  • Strange Holiness (1935)
  • Red Sky in the Morning (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1935)
  • John Dawn (1936)
  • Saltwater Farm. J. J. Lankes (illustration). (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1937.)
  • Thomas-Thomas-Ancil-Thomas (1941)
  • Book of Uncles (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1942)
  • Poems for a Son with Wings (1945)
  • People Behave Like Ballads (1946)
  • Yankee Coast (1947)
  • One Horse Farm (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1949)
  • Apples by Ocean (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1950)
  • On the Green Carpet (1951)

References

  1. ↑ Maine League of Historical Societies and Museums (1970). Doris A. Isaacson, ed. Maine: A Guide 'Down East'. Rockland, Me: Courier-Gazette, Inc. pp. 176–177.
  2. ↑ http://www.brunswick.k12.me.us/cof/about-coffin-school/

Sources

  • NNDB; American Book Exchange; List of books written in Kennebec: Cradle of Americans (1937)
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