Robert B. Shaw

Robert B. Shaw is an American poet, literary critic, and professor emeritus of English at Mount Holyoke College. He studied at Harvard University and earned his Ph.D. from Yale, where he later taught before joining Mount Holyoke in 1983.

His poetry collections include The Wonder of Seeing Double, The Post Office Murals Restored, Below the Surface, Solving for X, and What Remains to Be Said: New and Selected Poems. Solving for X received the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, and his writing has appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The Nation, Poetry, and The New York Times Book Review.

Shaw has also written extensively about poetry, including studies of blank verse and the work of John Donne and George Herbert. His poems are often praised for their plainspoken intelligence, formal craft, wry humor, and close attention to the landscapes and experiences of daily life.