NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
WILLIAM P. ROBERTSON: GHOSTS OF A BROKEN HEART
Infinity Publishing Co 1094 New Dehaven Street, Suite 100
West Conshohocken
PA 19428-2713
USA
available from the author at
PO Box 293
Duke Center
PA 16729
USA
ISBN 0 7414 2664 1
$9.95

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This page last updated: 11th December 2007.
WILLIAM P. ROBERTSON: GHOSTS OF A BROKEN HEART

Subitled The Collected Early Poetry of William P Robertson, I feel slightly disadvantaged in not knowing the later work of this poet. If I did, it is quite likely that I would have a different view of this early work.

The text itself is held, as if in bookends, by photographs of the cover designs of his early collections.

There is clever use of concrete formats in the book, with quite a few very effective shape poems — a man, a heart, a bouquet of flowers, a scorpion, a head — one, of a car, wittily causes the wheels to revolve:

	  hy must
	w  your   n
	  motor ru
A lot of the poems are confessional or are written from the viewpoint of damaged or dysfunctional people, a murderer, a cab driver, an abused girl. Titles alone give a fair indication of content: I CAN ALWAYS HIDE MYSELF AWAY, I'D RATHER STAY HOME AND BLEED. The title poem of the collection aptly sums it all up:
	They levitate before me
	  in the onyx gloom,
	their silhouettes stitched
	  from renewed guilt.
	Their laughter is sarcastic,
	  distant thunder.
In his AUTHOR'S NOTE William P Robertson says that
It was only through accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour that I was able to eclipse the darkness chronicled here.
It would be interesting to revisit his work in another ten years to see how it has developed.

reviewer: John Francis Haines.