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

Fiction and poetry

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

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