Pulitzer Prize Poetry Winner

Strange Holiness

by Robert P. Tristram Coffin

Summary

Coffin's poems set Maine farms, fishing villages, and family memory at the center of a quietly reverent vision of rural life. He works mostly in plain rhymed quatrains and easy blank verse, building image by image from the textures of weather, animals, and labor. The book belongs to the regionalist current that prized local rootedness against an increasingly urban culture.

Historical Context & Significance

Coffin was a regionalist poet who championed the virtues of country living against the urbanization of America.