Poetry, Editing, and Research

Biography: Anthony Robbins

Robbins was born in North Carolina. He holds degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Syracuse University, and Louisiana State University. He has been on the faculties of the University of Minnesota, Duluth, the University of Louisiana-Monroe, the College of the Bahamas, and East Carolina University. He is a former Fulbright scholar to the Bahamas and an National Endowment for the Arts grantee. His two books are The Very Thought of You (U. of Georgia Press, 1999) and On the Tropic of Time (Lynx House Press, 1995,  Rept. by U. of Eastern Washington Press, 2006). For the past ten years he has lived overseas, for four years in Ecuador. He lives now in Carrboro, North Carolina. Please see c.v., etc., page on main menu.

 

 

"Historically one recognizes a recurring pattern in the biography of genius. Robbins' originality is in his language -- his extraordinary vocabulary, ranging from the vulgar to the technical and esoteric, his lively and variable syntax, his ear for poetic sounds. But he is by no means merely a wordsmith, not a language poet; though he resorts at times to punning, he never does it for its own sake, and his aim is neither to shock nor astonish. Instead he levies on all the resources of the verbal imagination with great acuity, aiming for richness of poetic experience, both his and the reader's, and what could be more gratifying?" Hayden Carruth

"Robbins speaks from the time when the world was serious, from the place where it was knit of flesh and history. In addition to their organic (as in humus) stubbornness, these poems confront the thinning of our consciousness with agonized integrity. Woven through the ur-battleground of the flesh and the captured words are luminous filaments of celebration, sensuality, wary abandonment. Robbins is a major poet, in an almost forgotten sense." Andrei Codrescu

"Robbins borders on surrealist visions and proper language poetics, as his poems weave in and out of a strange reality. His restless forms range from lyrical to prose poetic to abstract strings of sound. An unusual sequence that brings the hidden voice of the poet to a mysterious stage light." Bloomsbury Review

From the 20th Anniversity Issue of Seneca Review

Dissertation: University of Vermont Library

Existentialism and New England : the poetry and
criticism of Hayden Carruth / by Anthony Jerome
Robbins. 1990 Robbins, Anthony.
Library Location: Special Collections Wilbur (open
stacks) (B/H Ground Floor) Call Number: PS3505.A77594
Z5 1990