The first forty pages of the book is a nakedly autobiographical look at the first ten years of the author’s life on the water on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Written in gulps and fleeting drizzles or shadows, each section is written in its own style from high diction to short thrusts of tough guy […]
Disclosures
The book has all of the author’s skill and lovely, rhythmical language, but also a sense of loss of both life and love, the former viewed with both curiosity and indifference, the latter producing some of the author’s most moving love poem. The sea is. however, ever present, just like in his other works. It […]
Robert Arthur’s Eastern Shore
The book includes 4 one-act plays, a selection of his award-winning poems, and “Hymn to the Chesapeake,” a play with music. The culture of the Eastern Shore watermen and waterwomen has long been threatened by the erosion of winds off the Chesapeake Bay and a dwindling supply of crabs and “ersters” to be harvested. These […]
Robert P. Arthur: Selected Works
Internationally known for his Hymn to the Chesapeake, Robert P. Arthur is a virtuoso practitioner of a wide range of forms that demonstrate an acute feel for beauty and a dramatic sense of place. Here are Arthur’s best poems over a forty year period. Reading it, one wonders if his affinities for byways and love […]
Vija’s War
Arthur visits a wide range of themes ranging from the Russian occupation of Latvia during WWII, a study of the Jamestown colony stripped of its fairy tale sheen, a examination of the sons of Adam, and more.
River Country
Based on the poetry of Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda and dramatized by Robert P. Arthur, the musical poem/play moves from an out of body life-death experience when she was young to her marriage to South American Indian Patricio Foronda and her development as a painter and poet on the western bank of the Chesapeake Bay. The work […]
Phaedra
Phaedra is a post-modern verse treatment of an ancient myth in modern poetry, not a translation or adaptation of another work. It won five Port Folio Awards, including Best Play and was chosen to be performed before the diplomatic corps of Washington, D.C. starring European film star, Ina Gogolova. Available through Blue Moon Plays Order […]
Winter Tales By Candlelight
Written for the Generic Theatre in Norfolk, Virginia, it uses story telling, poetry, and music, including three original Christmas Carols,
Hymn to the Chesapeake (Expanded Edition)
In stunningly gorgeous and evocative language, Arthur resurrects the almost lost culture and physical presence of the Eastern Shore—it’s fishing villages, crafts, people, language, flora and fauna- with a display of drama and resurrected diction rarely seen in modern poetry. Expanded coffee table book with photographs by internationality celebrated pictorialist Aubray Bodine. Available in paperback […]
Hymn to the Chesapeake (poem/play with music)
Adapted from Hymn to the Chesapeake, the best-selling poetry book in Road Publisher’s history, this national and international experiment with a new form, the Poem/Play, has been seen by thousands in part or full (San Francisco, Washington D.C., New York City, Norway, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and St. Petersburg, Russia. This poetic tribute to the Eastern […]