Kirjahaku

"Len Roberts is a poet of unwavering truthfulness and unwavering mercy," commented Sharon Olds about Black Wings, a 1988 National Poetry Series selection. Counting the Black Angels, Roberts's eighth book of poetry, is a piercingly painful and redemptive work in which he probes memories of a violent family history and his covenants with God and the "Black Angels." "Roberts's new work is among the most intelligent, moving, and expressive poetry now being written." -- Hayden Carruth

Winner of several major awards, including the Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and National Poetry Series, Len Roberts is a powerful and uncompromising poet whose work redeems a turbulent past. "The Silent Singer" offers the best of Roberts' past work as well as a sizable collection of new poems.

In The Disappearing Trick, Len Roberts wrestles with the loss of loved ones--whether that loss be through death, a son moving away to college, or simply how people fade from our lives and memories. Hybrids of the narrative and lyric form, these poems are models of indirect statement that have, as Sharon Olds has said, "emotional courage, powerful music, and a deep balance." Like the light shining on a face, or a girl's thigh back in a sixth-grade class, the poems often come as Proustian flashes--lasting just a second, but seeming eternal--amid an increasing darkness.