The Chesapeake region has inspired and nurtured humanity for millennia. Long before the crossing of the Mayflower to this region, native Americans lived in harmony with the bounty of the land and seascape. The Pilgrims sought refuge in the new country when they landed in the marshes of the Chesapeake. Challenged by the thick forests, the climate, disease, the incredibly strong nature, the early settlements nearly died out. Humanity has been drawn to the natural beauty and bounty of the Chesapeake for as long as we can remember. Pirates, settlers, presidents, inventors, artists, poets, writers, musicians, farmers, fishermen, immigrants, people seeking refuge, livelihood, homestead, a way of life, their place.
Robert P. Arthur may be the finest poet ever to target the Eastern Shore of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay. Growing up in the small town of Melfa, he absorbed Eastern Shore language, culture, and bloodline. He says that knowledge of the water and people, storms at sea and sinking islands was “thrust” upon him; but leaving the shore as often as he did left him a preservationist at heart—this book his edifice. Into these poems he has poured not only himself but also half-forgotten towns, unpredictable stretches of water, watermen and waterwomen, oyster wars, moonshiners, and pirates, as well as sea grasses, water fowl, the photography of A. Aubrey Bodine and voices of the bay not his own.
So many doomed things are held in place in this book. So many shinings.

Hymn to the Chesapeake: Collector's Hardcover Edition

Literature & Fiction

Arthur, Robert P.

Poetry

Rolling Olive Press

After the conflagration of the third world war breaks the bonds of consensual reality, ten brutal and psychologically damaged men set out on horseback into a wilderness of inexplicable natural phenomena. Crazy Horse in Heaven is a wild and haunting epic of light and dark. Filled with unpredictable philosophical, pyschological and physical horror,it delivers a shadowy nightmare of the mind in which the hidden powers of the new and ancient world-- heaven, hell, angels, and demons--assume at least a momentary and literal existence. Intensely lyrical, the writing itself is stunningly brilliant.

Crazy Horse in Heaven

United States

Stonehall Pub

Hymn to the Chesapeake opened at the Trawler Dinner Theater on the Eastern Shore and has had over ninety performances in Virginia and Maryland, as well as performances in Washington, D.C., New York City, and St. Petersburg, Russia.  Readings using material from the play possibly exceed the number of actual productions and include readings for libraries, museums, universities, colleges, and literary festivals, as well as the Poetry Society of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.  The poem/play won Port Folio magazine’s Most Innovative Theater Award. For its creation, the author won the Christians in Theater Arts Award.   This musical play has been adapted from the book Hymn to the Chesapeake, ROAD Publishers, 33412 Lankford Highway, Painter, Virginia 23420.  The author uses fragments of actual conversations, traditional melodies, adapted lyrics from traditional songs, captions, etc.  He also uses the works of various painters, photographers, and writers as inspirations for various poems.  The literary works of William Warner have been used extensively and are often quoted.  The Crisfield section is based on a chapter of Warner’s Beautiful Swimmers.  The known composers whose works have been adapted herein are Gordon Bok (Clear Away in the Morning, Mrs. MacDonald’s Lament, and Saben, the Woodcutter), Les Dwier (Sadness and Divorce, Death, and Symmetry), Dodie Welsh Paris (Ladies of the Bay), Andy Stewart (Blackbird, Golden), Bob Zentz (Companioned by the Sea), Chris Van Cleave (Emmanuelle), and William Whiting and John B. Dykes (Eternal Father).  In some cases, the author has not been able to identify the sources of the music adapted. The introduction and arrangement of Leave Her Johnny, Leave Her have been adapted from a recording by The Virginia Company (Blow Ye Winds). Transcription and many arrangements are by Patrick Belote, Judi Beck and Carin Cowell.  Judi Beck first conceived of this project and has been both a driving force and a font of ideas in regard to its completion.  Bruce Jones greatly assisted with the plotting.  Also offering valuable advice and direction were Gray Arthur, Ann Louise Johnston, David Poyer, Lenore Hart, Elizabeth Arthur, Donna Robinson, and Joseph Adams.  First presented by the Trawler Dinner Theater under the direction of Judi Beck August 1995 in Exmore, Virginia with the following cast: Larry Lovelady, Marilyn Kellam, Laura Trala, Robert Oliver, Jim Turner, Sherry Belote, and Robert P. Arthur. Guitar by Bruce Jones and keyboard by Patrick Belote.

Hymn to the Chesapeake

Road Pub.

This collection of over 50 poems has all of Robert P. Arthur's skill and lovely, rhythmical language. 
For fans of his previous best seller Hymn to the Chesapeake, this collection is one of the author's most moving and beautiful works. 
The first forty pages of the Silver Beach Road poetry collection are nakedly autobiographical, beginning with the first ten years of the author’s life on the water on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Other poems in the book deal with later life: a soul-less lover, a history of witchcraft in America, a series of poems about Appalachia of the 1960’s in dialect. 
The sea is Robert Arthur’s mother, father, deity, heaven, a place of love and death to escape to. Surrealism has its place, along with the seriocomic and other post-modern elements. Penned in gulps and fleeting drizzles or shadows, each section has an individual style, from high diction to short thrusts of tough-guy prose. 
There is a sense of loss of both life and love. Death is viewed with both curiosity and indifference. The loss of love produces some of the author’s most moving love poems. The sea is ever-present, just like in his other works. 
Excerpts from Silver Beach Road 
◆…in the body of the Chesapeake, its wet tongues around me,I am naked in my heart and want everyone to hold me 
◆ So soft were her fingers , so maidenly floral,her pretty mouth and lips to dream of…she would be gone in an instant 
◆ From soul to earth and back again, said great uncle JimWeather signs were negative and not scuffed off by prayer

Silver Beach Road

Unicorn Bay Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Arthur, Robert P.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Arthur, Robert P.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Arthur, Robert P.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Hymn to the Chesapeake: Collector's Hardcover Edition

Crazy Horse in Heaven

Hymn to the Chesapeake

Silver Beach Road