I believe Kevin Roberts would be the consensus choice of the New Romantics as the best of their tribe. And it's easy to see why, with poems like "Christine" and his personal favorite, "Allayne." I have also long been partial Kevin's lovely "Rondel." The poem below, "Talent," is one I wrote for Kevin and which he requested more than once over the years, so I believe he liked it. Unfortunately the formatting is screwed up by Substack's interface.
Until I read the "Christine" in Age of Muses i hadn't read any of Mr. Roberts' work. I thought the stanza structure appropriate to the theme, and the repetition of Christine reminded me of Faustine. The heterometric rhyming couplets at stanza ends functioned well for internal cohesion,, transitions, and closures.
I believe Kevin Roberts would be the consensus choice of the New Romantics as the best of their tribe. And it's easy to see why, with poems like "Christine" and his personal favorite, "Allayne." I have also long been partial Kevin's lovely "Rondel." The poem below, "Talent," is one I wrote for Kevin and which he requested more than once over the years, so I believe he liked it. Unfortunately the formatting is screwed up by Substack's interface.
Talent
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin N. Roberts
1.
I liked the first passage
of her poem—where it led
(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
It will keep.
Before sleep,
let me read yours instead.
2.
There's something like love
in the rhythms of night
—in the throb of streets
where the late workers drone,
in the sounds that attend
each day’s sad, squalid end—
that reminds us: till death
we are never alone.
3.
So we write from the hearts
that will fail us anon,
words in red
truly bled
though they cannot reveal
whence they came,
who they're for.
And the tap at the door
goes unanswered. We write,
for there is nothing more
than a verse,
than a song,
than this chant of the blessed:
If these words
be my sins,
let me die unconfessed!
Unconfessed, unrepentant;
I rescind all my vows!
Write till sleep:
it’s the leap
only Talent allows.
Until I read the "Christine" in Age of Muses i hadn't read any of Mr. Roberts' work. I thought the stanza structure appropriate to the theme, and the repetition of Christine reminded me of Faustine. The heterometric rhyming couplets at stanza ends functioned well for internal cohesion,, transitions, and closures.
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