{{Short description|1910 poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson}} {{Use American English|date=December 2022}} {{Use mdy dates|date=December 2022}} {{Quote box | title = Miniver Cheevy | fontsize = 100% | quote = <poem>Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, Grew lean while he assailed the seasons; He wept that he was ever born, And he had reasons.
Miniver loved the days of old When swords were bright and steeds were prancing; The vision of a warrior bold Would set him dancing.
Miniver sighed for what was not, And dreamed, and rested from his labors; He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, And Priam's neighbors.
Miniver mourned the ripe renown That made so many a name so fragrant; He mourned Romance, now on the town, And Art, a vagrant.
Miniver loved the Medici, Albeit he had never seen one; He would have sinned incessantly Could he have been one.
Miniver cursed the commonplace And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; He missed the medieval grace Of iron clothing.
Miniver scorned the gold he sought, But sore annoyed was he without it; Miniver thought, and thought, and thought, And thought about it.
Miniver Cheevy, born too late, Scratched his head and kept on thinking; Miniver coughed, and called it fate, And kept on drinking. </poem> }} "'''Miniver Cheevy'''" is a narrative poem written by Edwin Arlington Robinson, published in ''The Town down the River'' in 1910.<ref>'Miniver Cheevy,' in "The Oxford Companion to American Literature," edited by James D. Hart, 4th edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).</ref> The poem (written in quatrains of iambic tetrameter for three lines, followed by a catalectic line of only three iambs), relates the story of a hopeless romantic who spends his days thinking about what might have been if only he had been born in a nobler and more romantic era.
Some scholars suggest that the character of Miniver is meant to be Robinson's self-aware skewering of his own sense of being an anachronism or throwback, but others add that Miniver represents a critique of the general culture of Robinson's time.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/robinson/miniver.htm | title=Modern American Poetry }}</ref> Regardless, the character portrait is similar to Robinson's Richard Cory, a deeply discontented individual unable to fit in with society and bent on self-destruction.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=215 | title=Miniver Cheevy }}</ref> Robinson's preoccupation with such characters is one of the reasons he was called "America's poet laureate of unhappiness."<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=174244| title = Miniver Cheevy by Edwin Arlington Robinson {{!}} Poetry Foundation| date = June 2022}}</ref>
==References in popular culture== * In Woody Allen's 2011 film ''Midnight in Paris'', the lead character Gil is compared to Miniver Cheevy by a condescending friend of his fiancée. * In Joseph Heller's ''Catch-22'', Major Major Major Major is also compared with Miniver Cheevy because of his late birth. * Helene Hanff compared herself to Miniver Cheevy, in her 1970 book ''84, Charing Cross Road''.
==External links== {{Wikisource|The town down the river; a book of poems/Miniver Cheevy|Miniver Cheevy}} *[http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/robinson/miniver.htm Critiques of this poem] * {{librivox book | title=Miniver Cheevy| author=Robinson}} (multiple versions)
==Notes== {{reflist}}
Category:American poems Category:Works by Edwin Arlington Robinson