Robert B. Shaw

Robert B. Shaw is an American poet and critic born in 1947. He studied at Harvard University, where he worked with Robert Lowell, and later earned a PhD from Yale. His poetry is often described as plainspoken and formally shaped, with influences including Elizabeth Bishop and Philip Larkin.

Over the years, he has published several books of poetry, including Solving for X, which won the Hollis Summers Prize, and Aromatics, a co-winner of the Poets’ Prize. He has also written literary criticism, including Blank Verse: A Guide to Its History and Use and The Call of God: The Theme of Vocation in the Poetry of Donne and Herbert.

Shaw taught at Mount Holyoke College, where he served as the Emily Dickinson Professor of English before retiring in 2016. Alongside his poems, he has written widely on modern and contemporary poetry, building a reputation as both a thoughtful scholar and a poet attentive to the textures of everyday life.