I was the publisher of Len Roberts’s first collection of poetry, COHOES THEATER, and it was recognized by the Elliston Prize Committee as one of the two dozen best books of poetry published in the United States in 1980. Roberts went on to have another half-dozen books published, including THE DRIVING. As I’ve been going through my archives, I found a copy of a review written by a poet in Philadelphia named Louis McKee. Both Roberts and McKee are dead, but I was thinking of them both today and decided to post this short review by McKee.
“Roberts has a cellar full of ghosts to exorcise — and may of the poems in THE DRIVING deal with those ghosts, whether they be his father, his brothers, mother, or other lost loved ones. But this volume deals especially with his mother, thus the title poem, “The riving,” which clearly shows what his mother “had been driven to,” and also sets the tone for the rest of the book. Indeed, many of these poems are ‘driven in that sense, and as one reads further he realizes he is being taken on a compulsory (for the writer, at least) journey, one which eventually leads from the hard, bitter memories to a place to in Big Red’s Bar where the person can
…………………. sitagain on the own red stools and lift
glasses of beer to the neon bull glowing
in the window, praising our mother and her
burnt fish cakes with side dishes of spaghetti,
praising our father who strode in those nights
with iced winter on his Army jacks fur collar.
Then we toast the thorazine that helps my bother
sleep, the benzedrine that wakes him up ….
(from “At Big Reds)
Clearly Roberts’ gentle and kind voice pulls a quiet strength, ‘a beautiful moral prescience’ as Gerald Stern calls it, from the re-living o what easily could have been destructive and cruel moments in his past. THE DRIVING insists upon a complete examination of these moments, without hesitation without fear, and because of this it is a book made of brave poems.”
— Louis McKee
Some of Len Roberts’s other books include THE SILENT SINGER; FROM THE DARK; COUNTING THE BLACK ANGELS, and THE TROUBLE-MAKING FINCH.
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YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
Len Roberts correspondence, 1983-2006
Collection consists of correspondence to Len Roberts from poets Hayden Carruth, Philip Levine, and Sharon Olds spanning over two decades from the mid-1980s to shortly before Roberts death in 2007. There are approximately 143 letters from Hayden Carruth, dating from 1984 to 2006. The correspondence files from Sharon Olds and Philip Levine, which contain 46 and 23 letters respectively, are augmented by notes in Roberts’ hand.
About Bill Mohr