Robert P.T. Coffin

Robert Peter Tristram Coffin (March 18, 1892 - January 20, 1955) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, and an academic.

Robert P.T. Coffin. Courtesy NNDB.

Robert Peter Tristram Coffin
Born	March 18, 1892 Brunswick, Maine, United States
Died	January 20, 1955 Brunswick, Maine, United States
Occupation	poet
Nationality	American

Life

Youth and education

Coffin was a native of Brunswick, Maine, and descendant of an original purchaser of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts.

He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1915, and went on to earn graduate degrees from Princeton University (1916) and Oxford University (1920) (where he was a Rhodes Scholar). Hew was a a professor at Wells College (1921–1934) and Bowdoin College (1934–1955).

Career

Coffin is best known as the author of more than 3 dozen works of literature, poetry and history.

Coffin dedicated his book "Captain Abby and Captain John" to his fellow Bowdoin College classmate 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 ship captains. A shipbuilding district of Brunswick known as Pennellville provided the inspiration for this book.

Coffin died of a heart attack in Brunswick, Maine on January 20, 1955. He was 62 years old.

Writing

Coffin's 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.

Recognition

Coffin won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his 1935 collection Strange Holiness.

Other awards Coffin has won include Honorary Life Member, National Arts Club, 1931; Phi Beta Kappa Poet at Harvard, 1932; Gold Medal, National Honor Poet, 1935; and elected to National Institute of Arts and Letters, 1946.

There is a school in Brunswick, Maine named after him. Coffin School opened in 1955, in his honor.

Publications

Poetry

• May Day Pageant: Wells, 1922. Aurora, NY: Wells College Endowment Fund, 1922.
• Christchurch: Poems. New York: T. Seltzer, 1924.
• The Golden Falcon. New York: Macmillan, 1929.
• The Yoke of Thunder. New York: Macmillan, 1932.
• Ballads of Square-Toed Americans. New New York: Macmillan, 1933.
• Strange Holiness. New York: Macmillan, 1935.
• Saltwater Farm (illustrated by Julius J. Lankes). New York: Macmillan, 1937.
• Maine Ballads. New York: Macmillan, 1938.
• Collected Poems. New York: Macmillan, 1939.
• There Will Be Bread and Love. New York: Macmillan, 1942.
• Poems for a Son with Wings. New York: Macmillan, 1945.
• People Behave Like Ballads. New York: Macmillan, 1946.
• One-Horse Farm: Down-east georgics. New York: Macmillan, 1949.
• Apples by Ocean. New York: Macmillan, 1955.
• Selected Poems. New York: Macmillan, 1955.

Fiction

• Portrait of an American. New York: Macmillan, 1931.
• An Attic Room. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1934.
• Red Sky in the Morning. New York: Macmillan, 1935.
• John Dawn. New York: Macmillan, 1936.
• Thomas-Thomas-Ancil-Thomas. 1941.
• Book of Uncles. New York: Macmillan, 1942.
• Yankee Coast (with Peggy Coffin). New York: Macmillan, 1947.
• One Horse Farm. New York: Macmillan, 1949.
• On the Green Carpet. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1951.

Non-Fiction

• Book of Crowns and Cottages. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1925.
• Laud: Storm center of Stuart England. New York: Brentano's, 1930.
• The Dukes of Buckingham: Playboys of the Stuart world. New York: Brentano's, 1931.
• Portrait of an American. New York: Macmillan, 1931.
• Lost Paradise: A boyhood on a Maine coast farm. New York: Macmillan, 1934.
• The Kennebec: Cradle of Americans. New York: Farrar & Rinehart (Rivers of America Series), 1937.
• New Poetry of New England: Frost and Robinson. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938; New York: Russell & Russell, 1964.
• Captain Abby and Captain John: An around-the-world biography. New York: Macmillan, 1939.
• Christmas in Maine. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Doran, 1941; Augusta, ME: Maine State Museum, 1980.
• The Substance that is Poetry. New York: Macmillan, 1942.
• Primer for America. New York: Macmillan, 1943.
• Mainstays of Maine. New York: Macmillan, 1944.
• Maine Doings. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950.
• Sir Isaac Coffin, Bart., 1759-1839: Admiral and prophet. New York: Newcomen Society in America, 1951.

Edited

• A Book of Seventeenth-Century Prose (edited with Alexander M. Witherspoon). New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1928.
• Seventeenth-Century Prose and Poetry (with Alexander M. Witherspoon). New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1946.

  

  The Secret Heart by Robert Peter Trisram Coffin

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

References

Fonds

• Coffin collection, George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives, Bowdoin College

External links

Poems

• "Old Blue"
• "Bread and Love"
• "Country Boy Sliding"

Audio / video

• Robert P.T. Coffin at YouTube
• Audio introduction to Coffin's life and work by Coffin scholar Kevin Belmonte

Books

• Robert P.T. Coffin: books, stories, and written works
• robert P. Tristram Coffin at Amazon.com

About

• Robert P. Tristram Coffin in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Coffin, Robert at Maine: An encyclopedia
• Robert P. Tristram Coffin at NNDB
• "The Religious Quest in Robert P. Tristram Coffin's Poetry" (.PDF)
• "Puritanism versus the Old Green Gods: New England in the poetry of Robert P. Tristram Coffin" (.PDF)