Four Poems for Robin

“Four Poems for Robin” is divided into four parts via location and time subheadings. Each part is of random length, with the fourth being the longest and the least descriptive. Snyder does not use rhyme and employs no rhythmic meter. “Four Poems for Robin” is organized by theme, with each part featuring the speaker’s thoughts or dreams of Robin and their relationship. The parts are linked emotionally and through repeating physical motifs, a deliberate strategy Snyder employs with his longer poetry. As he told the interviewer Ekbert Faas in 1973 (See: Further Readings & Resources), he often worked in the “ideogrammic method” in which the “juxtaposing apparently unrelated things […shows] the connections automatically. That is, of course, what I’d have in mind in my work.” (Faas, Ekbert. Towards a New American Poetics: Essays and Interviews. Black Sparrow Press, 1978). In other words, the motifs that center around Robin (temperature, flower blooms, stars, and sensual connection) repeat in a nonchronological manner. The parts of “Four Poems for Robin” are fragments of the speaker’s relationship with his former girlfriend, but they are leading to the speaker’s realizations regarding love and loss and how these will affect him in his next stage of life.