He got deathly ill every Christmas-time

American poet Edward Arlington Robinson ("Miniver Cheevy") was born on this day in 1869. When he died in 1935 he was considered one of the greatest poets in America.


"The popular interpretation of Christianity," he wrote, "makes me sick."
 

   As a child Sully had thought about God only when he’d had to. Church was a dreary enough experience: The pastor’s perpetual pleas for donations, the highly unsatisfactory stories sandwiched in-between. The preacher’s exhortations to think of the Almighty as a friend and mentor were lost on Sully, who considered the whole business of God sending His own son down to suffer and die for his sake a pretty nasty one, not to mention a damn convoluted arrangement.  --  Chapter 13, The Misforgotten.