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Robin Lampson began writing verse at an early age. His
poetry can be seen in the 1916 Healdsburg High School
Sotoyoman yearbook, which was the year Lampson graduated.
That same year he published his first book of poetry, On
Reaching Sixteen and Other Verses. Lampson’s book contains
poems addressing a range of themes, ranging from descriptions of
local scenery in “Geyser Peak at Night” to the horrors of World
War I in “The War’s Cry to Womanhood.” By then, his poetry had
appeared in several of the leading papers and magazines of the
San Francisco, including The Call, The Examiner,
The Bulletin, and Everywoman.
In the foreword of the poetry Lampson writes:
To those who pay
me the compliment of reading these youthful attempts at poetry
there is little to say. These verses have no moral to propound,
no message to tell, no great truths to sing. They were written
merely because I felt like writing. This volume, which makes its
appearance simultaneously with my graduation from high school,
is a souvenir of the occasion, as well as summing up of seven
years of writing…
After several years of odd jobs on farms,
railroads, and docks, Robin Lampson entered Stanford University
in 1919, but left in the fall of 1922 to join Herbert Hoover’s
Quaker famine-relief forces in Russia, where he worked for
nearly a year in the heart of the famine area as an interpreter
and a manager of relief. In 1923 he returned to America, and in
1931 received his degree from University of California, Berkeley
with honors in Slavic and the award of the Phi Beta Kappa key.
Following his graduation, he continued to work as a poet,
editor, critic, lecturer, and writer. In 1934, Lampson married
Margaret Fraser, also a published poet, in Oakland.
In
1935, Robin Lampson’s first novel in cadence, Laughter Out of
the Ground, was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, the
New York publishing house. The novel is written as a poem that
tells the story of a miner of the ’49 days who emigrated to
California, has vivid experiences in the mines, becomes a stage
driver, and finally settles in “Sotoyome” as a blacksmith. The
story is fiction, although the background is authentic history.
Robin Lampson was obviously inspired by the stories of his
parents and grandparents. |
