Introduction 11a drastic shift in the way they employed and thought about them
(68). Robinson employs many of these same familiar forms—blank
verse, Spenserian stanzas, sonnets, odes, hymnal measures—but she
also devises many of her own forms, “nonce” forms, and can boast
of greater stanzaic variety than Wordsworth or Coleridge. If, as John
Hollander says in “Romantic Verse Form and the Metrical Contract,”
the choice of a metrical scheme indicates, like a title, “what sort of
thing the poem is supposed to be” (189), then Robinson’s contempo-
rary readers could tell that they were in for something highly original.
As I have indicated, other studies of Robinson’s life and career have
begun reconstructing the cultural significance of her performative
celebrity and her literary representations of herself; but just as impor-
tant is the reconstruction of the period’s apprehension of form as an
element readable in and of itself, and poets’ deliberate participation in
the formal engagement. Robinson was aware of this when she chose
to write a poem in a particular form, so we should be too.
Indeed, contemporary commentary on Robinson, while generally
favorable, rarely commends her poetry in more specific terms than
“poetical,” “elegant,” or “harmonious,” although these terms are
not without meanings more precise than are apparent. In many ways,
Robinson’s poetry is like pop music: it is technically proficient—
slick even—but not always intended to convey great profundity. As
one reviewer remarked, Robinson “certainly possesses a brilliancy
of fancy, and command of poetical language; but the ear is oftener
addressed than the heart in her productions” (Rev. of Sappho 114).
And reviewers generally praised the poetry in Robinson’s novels
while lambasting the prose. In this regard, I disagree with Sharon M.
Setzer who, introducing the predominantly negative reviews of The
Natural Daughter, suggests that “the reiterated praise for Robinson’s
poetry [is] a coercive gesture, reinscribing a feminine ideal of beau-
tiful, but largely ineffectual, expressiveness” (327). While I would
never presume the absence of ulterior motives, I do find most of
the criticisms of Robinson’s fiction to be valid; one critic remarks,
“We regret that the author will not confine her labours to poetry,
in which she superiorly excels, and has given fresh proofs of in this
Novel” (qtd. in Setzer, Natural 329). The novel in the 1790s was
still gendered feminine, so critical approbation of her poetic skills
such as this, rather than her strengths in writing fiction, ought not to
be dismissed. Moreover, as I hope to show, Robinson’s formal prac-
tices are fundamentally masculine and resist the reinscription of “a
feminine ideal.” Terms such as beauty or elegant were not dismissive9780230100251_02_int.indd 119780230100251_02_int.indd 11 12/28/2010 11:08:08 AM12/28/2010 11:08:08 AM
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