cover image Poems: Selected & New 1967-1991

Poems: Selected & New 1967-1991

Robert Peters. Asylum Arts, $20 (192pp) ISBN 978-1-878580-30-6

Peters ( Good Night, Paul ) turned to poetry in the sixties when his four-and-a-half-year-old son died of meningitis. Writing was a form of therapy for him at the time, as he writes in the foreword, ``a way of maintaining my sanity.'' The poems from his first book record the agony of his experience. They are not artistic or linguistically original but their poignancy is affecting. What follows, unfortunately, reflects the worst excesses of confessional poetry: ``Slap my face again /you say, at least / I'll know something / you mean, where I stand. /Why can't you come? / I have.'' Most of the work involves intimate dialogue that belongs more appropriately in a private journal, since it has not been reshaped adequately to have larger significance for the reader. A sizable portion of the text also includes ``verse-portraits'' of historical figures as diverse as Dillinger and Ludwig of Bavaria. Generally, these poems focus on the sexual proclivities or foul habits of their subjects (``Mad King Ludwig'': ``His underpants are grimed. / Scour them.'') and accomplish nothing except for the tiny whiff of irony that predictably goes hand-in-hand with the compressed verse form. (Sept.)