POETRY
POETRY
Books:
Mind the Gap: Poems by an American in London. Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2003.
What others say about Mind the Gap:
| Like Mark Twain, his fellow Missourian, Robert Hamblin takes
readers on an adventuresome and imaginative journey of the city of
Shakespeare, Dryden, Darwin, Mrs. Dalloway, Margaret Thatcher, a
Falstaff-looking tramp who tries to bed a lass in a pub, and a whole host of
other lively characters his camera-perfect eye captures for us. His
poems are witty and written in polished American English vernacular.
They sparkle with the piquant sincerity of a man who can exist in and bring
into harmonious closure two different continents. Since we can't take
the Concorde to Heathrow anymore, I urge anglophiles everywhere to read and
rejoice in Mind the Gap, which can get us to London even quicker
and with more delights than the fabled plane that competed with sound for
speed. --Philip Kolin, editor of the Tennessee Williams Encyclopedia and
author of numerous books, articles, and poems
|
| Robert Hamblin's poems in this fine
collection discover a London of the heart--a moveable and moving feast of
reflections and observations--from Holland Park to Hyde Park, from Bloomsbury
to Leicester Square, and all around the town. He builds for us a richly
memorable city of words that deserves repeated visits. --Joseph Stanton,
author of Imaginary Museum: Poems and Art and Cardinal Points: Poems
on St. Louis Cardinal Baseball
|
| To read these gentle, beautiful poems in one sitting, from
beginning to end, is to submit yourself to the enchantment of poetic
evocation, literature that transports the spirit and allows the mind to revel
in heightened experiences. Robert Hamblin works such magic in Mind
the Gap, inviting us to travel with him, on his passionate journey through
literary London and England ancient and modern. But this book is no mere
poetic travelogue. Hamblin has fused images and memories from trips he's
made to England, over a dozen years, into this book, allowing us to share in
the fulfillment of a dream he had as boy growing up in the rural South: to
visit the "scepter'd isle," to come under its spell. --Louis
Daniel Brodsky, author of Shadow War: A Poetic Chronicle of September 11
and Beyond and many other books
|
To order a copy of Mind the Gap, send $12, plus $3 for shipping and handling, to Southeast Missouri State University Press, Department of English, Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, MO 63701.
From the Ground Up. St. Louis: Time Being Books, 1992.
What others say about From the Ground Up:
| Robert Hamblin's voice is strong, clear, readable,
and wise--full of realities, nostalgia, and timeless truths. He is a father
showing us the path, a child eager to go, a best friend inviting us to
join him along the way. His poems are crafted with gentleness and care.
They will not leave us alone.--Charles Ghigna, Alabama School of Fine Arts
|
| Robert Hamblin's poems, like his grandfather's
clock, unwind in remarkable words, striking the half-hours and hours of
memory, resonant with the past, as intricate as ticks. Speaking seminally
of love, of truth, they march continuously toward that inevitable newness
of old ground: the renewed intelligence of love.--Don Welch, University
of Nebraska at Kearney
|
| Robert Hamblin is a very personal poet who writes
with deep feeling about commonplace events, members of his family, and
places he has known as an adult. More poignantly, he remembers the summer
when the road to town was paved, programs from Cincinnati radio station
WCKY, and Saturday-afternoon movies featuring such cowboy stars as Roy
Rogers and Gene Autry. This important collection of his poetry deserves
thoughtful reading.--Gerald Walton, University of Mississippi
|
| Readers who are familiar with Hamblin's poems
as they have appeared in various journals over the years will be delighted
to have many of them together in one sustained lyrical narrative sequence
that is rich with recollection and remembrance, transience and transcendence
. . . These poems are strong with place, resonant with the sense of the
numinous which lingers at the crossroads of history and family, past and
present, loneliness and community, landscape and inscape.--H. R. Stoneback,
State University of New York, College at New Paltz
|
To order a copy of From the Ground Up, go to the Time Being Books web site.
Chapbook:
Perpendicular Rain . Cape Girardeau: Southeast Missouri State University, 1986.
Selected individual poems:
"Advice to a Young Poet." Cape Rock, 30 (Spring 1995), 14-15.
"Always, Before Joy." Cape Rock, 36 (Spring 2004), 41.
"Autumn at Woodland Hills Country Club." Cape Rock, 15 (Summer 1980), 49.
“Basketball Suite,” Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, 20 (Spring 2003).
"Big Apple." Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, 8 (Spring 1991), 92.
"For Dal, on the Fourth of July." Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine, no. 42 (Fall 1992), 44-45.
"Front Porch." Crossroads: A Journal of Southern Culture, 4 (Fall 1996/Winter 1997), 57-58.
"Groundskeepers: Opening Day." Elysian Fields Quarterly, 12 (Opening Day Issue 1993), 42.
"Half-Court Advantage." Arete: The Journal of Sport Literature, 5 (Fall 1987), 179-180.
"London Rain." The Listening Eye (Kent State University, Geauga Campus, Summer 1995).
"Mr. October." Elysian Fields Quarterly, 13 (Winter 1994), 34.
"Nevertheless." Big Muddy 6.2 (2006): 120.
"On the Death of the Evansville University Basketball Team in a Plane Crash." Cape Rock, 17 (Summer 1982), 40. Reprinted in Robert J. Higgs, Sports: A Reference Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982), and David L. Vanderwerken and Spencer K.Wertz, eds., Sport Inside Out: Readings in Literature and Philosophy (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1985).
"One Sunday in May." The Listening Eye (Kent State University, Geauga Campus, 1996), 6.
"Pick and Roll." Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, 8 (Spring 1991), 14.
"Picking Strawberries." Ozark Mountaineer, 49 (April-May 2001), 56.
"Running: Cape Girardeau, November 1993." Cape Rock, 30 (Spring 1995), 16-17.
"This Fall Day." Cape Rock, 36 (Spring 2004), 40.
“Trees,” Cape Rock 35.1 (2002).
"The Way to Watch a Football Game." Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, 19 (Fall 2001), 182.
Forthcoming::
Keeping Score: Sports Poems for Every Season (Time Being Books, 2007).
In progress:
Crossroads. A collection of poems about growing up at Brice's Cross Roads, Mississippi.