>is the Robinson mentioned here
related - in spirit - to the Robinson used by Weldon Kees? Kees did
several of these robinson poems, IIRC. Kees' robinson isn't mentioned
in the article yet they do seem related, superficially at least.
Oh definitely - Robinson the out-of-time, Robinson the wanderer. In "London"
it's a paradox because Robinson wants to be the flaneur, the 18th century
man, the W.Benjamin, but he gets depressed and spends "four weeks staying up
very late reading only Robinson Crusoe" - is he, after all, a ghost of
Protestant isolation?
Edmund
p.s. [Simon Armitage writes some Robinson poems in "Kid", directly after
Kees, writing which Iain Sinclair calls, perhaps unfairly, (in "Sorry
Meniscus: excursions to the dome" - remembered quote) as "Simon Armitage
hanging around Kees looking for crumbs"]
|