Robert Peters

Robert Peters in 2004. Photo by Pjt48. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikipedia.

Robert Peters
Born	October 20, 1924(1924-Template:MONTHNUMBER-20) Eagle River, Wisconsin, Unites States
Died	June 13, 2014(2014-Template:MONTHNUMBER-13) (aged 89) Irvine, California, United States
Occupation	poet, memoirist, Victorian literature scholar, critic, playwright, professor
Nationality	American
Influences Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Robert Browning, John Addington Symonds, John Keats, Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, Robert Creeley, James Dickey

Robert Louis Peters (October 20, 1924 - June 13, 2014) was an American poet, academic, and literary critic.

Life

Youth and education

Peters was born in Eagle River in northern Wisconsin. His parents named him after poet Robert Louis Stevenson, whose collection A Child's Garden of Verse was among the few books they owned.

After army service during World War II, he enrolled at University of Wisconsin, where he received a B.A. in 1948, an M.A. in 1949 and a doctorate in 1952. He held a Ph.D in Victorian literature.

Career

His teaching career took him to Wayne State University, Boston University, Ohio Wesleyan, University of Idaho at Moscow, University of California at Riverside, and finally the University of California at Irvine, where he began teaching in 1967.

His field of study was Victorian literature. In addition to publishing numerous articles and monographs, he edited, with Herbert Schueller, the letters of John Addington Symonds. Peters received a Fulbright Fellowship to Cambridge, England in the 1960s to work on Symonds' letters. In 1965, he published The Crowns of Apollo, a scholarly study on Algernon Charles Swinburne.

After Peters' Songs for a Son was published, he devoted more time to writing and study of contemporary poetry. Fellow poets Charles Wright and James McMichael and novelist Oakley Hall taught poetry at UC Irvine during this time and shared directorship of the university's well-known Master of Fine Arts program.

Poet and critic

Peters was a prolific poet, having published some 30 books of poems, and an important critic of contemporary American poetry. His poetry career began in 1967 when his young son Richard died unexpectedly of spinal meningitis. The book commemorating this loss, Songs for a Son, was selected by poet Denise Levertov to be published by W.W. Norton in 1967, and it still remains in print. Songs for a Son began a flood of poetry.

In his controversial books of criticism — The Great American Poetry Bake-Off series, Peters Black and Blue Guides to Current Literary Magazines and Hunting the Snark: A Compendium of New Literary Terminology — he has assessed more than 400 contemporary poets and critics. He also wrote poetry reviews for the Los Angeles Times. His Workers, Drones & Queens of Contemporary American Poetry offers readers the best of these writings collected in a single volume. Included are some 35 essays on and reviews of such major figures as Robert Bly, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Diane Wakoski, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Tess Gallagher and W. S. Merwin, as well as commentaries on the work of many lesser-known poets.

He was published by both large and small presses, including Norton, Wayne State University Press, Crossing Press, New Rivers, Cherry Valley Editions, Unicorn Press, GLB Publishing, Paragon House, Chiron Review Press and the University of Wisconsin Press. In the fall of 2001, the 40th volume of his Familial Love and Other Misfortunes was published by Red Hen Press.

Peters served as a contributing editor for The American Book Review, Contact II and Paintbrush. He also judged competitions for fellowships and prizes for an assortment of small presses and for the Poetry Society of America and PEN International.

Performances

His acting career developed after countless poetry readings. Peters wanted to reach a larger audience with his poetry by transforming his personae poetry into theatrical monologues replete with memorized scripts, lighting, settings and sound tracks. He performed at Barnsdall Art Park in Los Angeles, at Carpet Company Theatre in Los Angeles, Fine Art Theatre at UCI, Provincetown’s Summer Theatre, St. Matthews Church near Broadway, New York and many college campus venues. He took acting lessons from his colleague, Fine Arts Professor Robert Cohen (acting theorist), at University of California, Irvine. These performances are all well-documented in Peters’ journals, video recordings, flyers, playbills, posters and scrapbooks, replete with reviews and photos, which are all housed and catalogued at the UCSD Mandeville Special Collections Library.

Private life

Shortly after his divorce from his wife Jean, Peters met poet Paul Trachtenberg and established a relationship lasting more than 36 years.

Writing

Poetry

Peters's poetry covers a wide range of themes and forms, from intensely personal volumes of private celebrations and losses — the death of a son, the break-up of a marriage, and his rural Wisconsin origins — to excursions into the psyches of a vast gallery of historical eccentrics, numbering among them, a Bavarian king, a Hungarian countess (and mass murderer) and a British romantic painter. The root of his interest in personae poetry goes back to his studies of Victorian poet Robert Browning. He adapted both King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Elizabeth Báthory, the Hungarian Countess, for theatrical presentation, performing them around the country. His Poems: Selected & New includes a rich sampling of work written over the past 30 years, while collecting in a single volume many of Peters' best poems.

Billy Collins, a former student of Peters and now a noted poet in his own right, once described Peters' poetry: "[…] modifies poetic language and breaks new artistic ground. By combining playful rhymes with painfully serious matter, he has returned new tonal possibilities to poetry. By fully exploiting the metaphor of the body, […] he has provided a fresh code for the expression of feeling ..."

Poet Diane Wakoski described his poetry as: "The fascination with the dead, with the rotting, with pigs rooting into the earth, a poem about a primal scene in a root cellar, discovering sex and the underground, taboo, death-related experience — this is what all of Peters' poetry is about [...] which gives it great originality and power."

Criticism

Poet Robert Bly described Peters' American Poetry Bakeoff book of criticism as "not maternal ... insights are set down simply, unornamented, as if intended to glance off, and yet I think they are important, and belong to the center ... He deserves numerous readers, particularly among young poets dissatisfied with the celebrities who keep writing the same poem over and over again ... [His] essay on Robert Creeley is superb; the best essay on his work I know."

Memoirs

Peters wrote 4 memoirs of his woebegone days during the 1930s in the north woods of Wisconsin. His last memoir was on the death of his 3rd son, which took place in the 1950s. Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List, summarized Peters' 2nd memoir, Nell's Story, by saying, "As a fascinating exercise in obscure lives retrieved, as a joint effort in painful and exultant memory, this rich memoir has the playful seriousness and inventive charm which characterizes the work of Robert Peters ...""

Recognition

Peters received Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and won the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award of the Poetry Society of America.

Publications

Poetry

• Songs for a Son. New York: Norton, 1967.
• The Sow's Head, and other poems. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1968.
• Connections: In the English Lake District. London: Anvil Press Poetry (Chapbook Series), 1972.
• Red Midnight Moon. San Francisco: Empty Elevator Shaft, 1973.
• Holy Cow: Parable poems. San Francisco: Red Hill Press, 1974.
• Bronchial Tangle, Heart System. Hanover, NH: Granite Publications, 1974.
• Cool Zebras of Light. Santa Barbara, CA: Christopher's Books, 1974.
• The Gift to Be Simple: A garland for Ann Lee. New York: Liveright, 1975.
• The Poet as Ice-Skater. South San Francisco, CA: Manroot Books, 1976.
• Gauguin's Chair: Selected poems, 1967-1974. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1977.
• Hawthorne: Poems adapted from the American notebooks. Fairfax, CA: Poet Skin / Red Hill Press, 1977.
• The Drowned Man to the Fish: Poems. New Rivers Press 1978.
• Ikagnak: The North Wind. Pasadena, CA: Kenmore Press, 1978.
• Celebrities: In memory of Margaret Dumont, dowager of the Marx Brothers movies (1890-1965). Berkeley, CA: Sombre Reptiles, 1981.
• The Picnic in the Snow: Ludwig of Bavaria. St. Paul, MN: New Rivers Press, 1982.
• What Dillinger Meant to Me. New York: Sea Horse Press, 1983.
• Love Poems for Robert Mitchum. St. John, KS: Chiron Review Press, 1983.
• Hawker. Greensboro, NC: Unicorn Press, 1984.
• Kane. Greensboro, NC: Unicorn Press, 1985.
• Shaker Light: Mother Ann Lee in America. Greensboro, NC: Unicorn Press, 1986.
• Haydon: An artist's life. Greensboro, NC: Unicorn Press, 1988.
• Breughel's Pig. Los Angeles: Illuminati Press, 1990.
• Good Night, Paul. San Francisco: GLB Publishers, 1992.
• Poems: Selected and new, 1967-1991. Santa Maria, CA: Asylum Arts, 1992.
• Familial Love, and other misfortunes. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2002.
• Makars' Dozens> Long Beach, CA: Pearl Edition, 2006.

Plays

• Ludwig: A play. Huntington Beach, CA: privately published, 1983
  • also published as Mad Ludwig of Bavaria: A play. Huntington Beach, CA: Poet-Skin Press, 1984.
  • revised as Ludwig of Bavaria: A verse biography and a play for single performer. Cherry Valley, NY: Cherry Valley Edition, 1986.
• The Blood Countess, Erzébet Bathory of Hungary (1560-1614): A gothic horror poem of violence and rage; with Báthory, a play for single performer. Cherry Valley, NY: Cherry Valley Edition, 1987.
• Snapshots For a Serial Killer: A fiction and a play. San Franciso: GLB Publishers, 1992.
• Mad Ludwig of Bavaria and other short plays. Paradise, CA: Asylum Arts, 2001.

Non-fiction

• Victorians on Literature and Art. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1961.
• The Crowns of Apollo: Swinburne's principles of literature and art. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1965.
• Pioneers of Modern Poetry (with George Hitchcock). San Francisco: Kayak Press, 1967.
• Gabriel: A Poem by John Addington Symonds, Edited by Robert Peters & Timothy D'Arch Smith, London: Harrington 1974
• The Great American Poetry Bake-Off: I, II, III, IV. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1979, 1982, Third series, 1987; Fourth series, 1991.
• The Peters' Black and Blue Guide to Current Literary Journals. Silver Spring, MD: Cherry Valley Editions, 1983.
• The Peters Second Black and Blue Guide to Current Literary Journals. Silver Spring, MD: Cherry Valley Editions, 1985.
• The Peters Black and Blue Guide to Current Literary Journals: Third series. Paradise, CA: Dustbooks, 1987.
• Hunting the Snark: A compendium of new poetic terminology. New York: Paragon House, 1989
  • revised as Hunting The Snark: American poetry at century end: Classifications and Commentary. Greensboro, NC: Avisson Press, 1997.
• Where the Bee Sucks: Workers, drones & queens of contemporary American poetry. Santa Maria, CA: Asylum Arts, 1994.
• SLIME: The secret sex-life of J. Edgar Hoover (illustrated by Eric Reynolds). Seattle, WA: Eros Comix 1995

Memoirs

• Crunching Gravel: Growing up in the thirties. San Francisco: Mercury House, 1988
  • also published as Crunching Gravel: A Wisconsin boyhood in the thirties. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.
• Nell's Story: A Woman From Eagle River. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
• For You, Lili Marlene" A memoir of World War II. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
• Feather: A child's death and life. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.

Edited

• Edmund Gosse, America: The diary of a visit, winter 1884-1885. Lafayette, IN: English Department, Purdue University, 1966.
• John Addington Symonds, The Letters of John Addington Symonds (edited with H.Schueller). (3 volumes), Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1967-1969.
• Letters to a Tutor: The Tennyson family letters to Henry Graham Dakyns (1861-1911), with the Audrey Tennyson Death-bed diary. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1988.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

Friday Gretchen reads Robert Peters' poem, For My Son

• List of U.S. poets
• List of literary critics

References

Essays

• Diane Wakoski, in American Poetry, Winter 1985, 71-78
• Billy Collins, "Literary Reputation and the Thrown Voice", in A Gift of Tongues: Critical Challenges in Contemporary American Poetry, eds. Marie Harris and Kathleen Augero, University of Georgia Press, 1987, 295-306.
• Charles Hood, "Robert Peters", for the Dictionary of Literary Biography.

Interviews

• With Billy Collins, in Gauguin's Chair: Selected Poems, Crossing Press, 1977
• With William Matthews, "The Shaker Poems", in The Great American Poetry Bake-off: Second Series, Ibid., 141-150.
• Featured in the Writer's Autobiography Series, Vol. VIII, Gale Research Company, December 1989

Fonds

All of Robert Peters' papers from 1950–1990, including letters, manuscripts (both published and unpublished), and journals containing his poetry and prose, are on deposit in the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. His working library of contemporary poetry, with related papers, is now in the Rare Book Collection, Bowling Green State University. Recently his remaining archives have been obtained by the Weisel Library Special Collections, University of San Diego.

External links

Poems

• "My Father as House Builder"
• Pig Poetry at Porkopolis

Prose

• "The Poem as Spirit-Meat: Michael McClure's corpus of poems"

Audio / video

• Robert Peters at YouTube

Books

• Robert Peters at Amazon.com

About

• Robert Peters Emeritus
• EchoNYC interview
• Lambda Report
• GLB Bio
  • Robert Peters: Voices of a poet fanblog