Book Review: Fatal Women by Kevin Roberts

The poems of Kevin Roberts (1969-2008) are indeed an anomaly among the sea of “Modernist,” “Formalist” and “Contemporary” verses that have proliferated throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The poetry of Kevin Roberts is indeed a stupendous exception from the avalanche of dross that we have grown so accustomed to.

Upon reading Fatal Women, the reader is be struck by something that feels and sounds very much like his/her own English vernacular, and yet each poem seems to be permeated by a strange and enchanting quality, a quality that one has perhaps never experienced before in quite the same way. Indeed, we discover that our own English has been newly adapted to the timeless classical forms that have shaped the sound and music of the greatest bards throughout the history of English poetry.

Roberts has not bent to the populist demands of twentieth century critics; he has not been swayed by any of the contemporary zeitgeists who have weighed down so many other aspiring arti…