BLACK GUM AGAINST THUNDER

"Arthur makes me nostalgic for places I've never been" The Virginian-Pilot

"Each rereading of this narrative delights me more." -- Pleasant Living Magazine

"masterfully depicts life on and around the Chesapeake." -- Currents

"Passionate knowledgekeen observation." -- The News Journal, Delaware

"The most evocative writing about the Chesapeake since Beautiful Swimmers" -- David Poyer

"as tough and genuine as a waterman's palmthese rhythms are the sway of boats on tide waterswind, straining ropes, and snapping sails." -- Ghent Magazine

"a powerful introduction to those who do not know the Baya delightful reminder for those who do." -- Eastern Shore News

Attracting national and international attention, Arthur's work is a virtuoso performance of a wide variety of poetic forms and techniques, informed by an acute sense of drama and place.

This first-ever collection includes the best of Robert P. Arthur's hundreds of poems written over a forty-year career. They include The Arrow, Wikipedia, The Poetess of Blue Streak Grill, Cattle Sleeping (or Sleeping Cattle), Appearances, Sunday Seizures, and poems in series: Vija's War, and Crazy Horse's Woman. Many are emotionally and intellectually charged monologues from the mouths of such diverse characters as disillusioned Jamestown settlers, Crazy Horse's death/love obsessed woman, a Latvian child caught up in World War II, Appalachian snake handlers, Chesapeake Bay watermen, Vincent van Gogh, traumatized children, and Arthur himself. Together, they immortalize a doomed natural world with unparalleled beauty.

Accessible yet lyrical, these poems will move you whether you like other poetry or not. "We are all murdered: all...."

Arthur's poems focusing on place have been pod-cast from San Francisco and his poem/plays produced on stage in Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C., Pennsylvania, New York City, and St. Petersburg, Russia.

About the Author

Robert P. Arthur grew up on the Eastern Shore of Virginia and in Norfolk, Virginia. He has a M.A. from the University of Richmond, where he studied under historian Clifford Dowdey, and a M.F.A. from the University of Arkansas, where he studied under poet Miller Williams and fiction writer William Harrison. He teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania. Arthur has written over twenty books of poems and plays, and over a thousand articles on the arts. In 2008 and 2010 he was a finalist for Poet Laureate of Virginia. He lives in Onancock on the Eastern Shore of Virginia with his wife, Gray, and has five children: Nicole, Hannah, Elizabeth, Robert William, and Eudora.

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