Robert A.B. Sawyer — Poet & Copywriter

Robert A.B. Sawyer, young
Robert Sawyer in Maine on the Appalachian Trail, summer of 1973. Through Maine to New Hampshire. 30 days on the trial.— Photo: Eric Brehm.
Robert A.B. Sawyer
Robert Sawyer, a glass of whole milk, in hotel room in Los Angeles. Time will tell. Photo: Robert Sawyer. 2023.

You have used up the years and they have used you / And still, and still, you have not written the poem.

— Jorge Luis Borges. Tran. Alastair Reid

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

— John 1:1 KJV

Tell the truth but tell it slant.

— Emily Dickinson

There are exits but no escapes.

— Robert A.B. Sawyer

I shall lean into the calligraphy of new wheat.

— George Hitchcock

Mine is a career that has been described as: Haphazard but not indiscriminate.

Portrait of Robert Sawyer by Rainer Gross
Portrait of Robert Sawyer (1982) by Rainer Gross. Tie: Gift of John Giordano.

I am agnostic as to the media in which my words appear—advertising, poems or stories.

Once upon a time, working for advertising agencies and with graphic design firms, as well as directly for local, national and global corporations, I helped build brands, developed positionings and created communications, executed across various and sundry media. But that was then, today I write poetry.

Rolodex

Regarding Poetry.

I am a poet, the author of American Lullaby: Poems by Robert A.B. Sawyer. I was a winner of the 2003 Discovery/The Nation Poetry Competition. My poem, "How I Know She's Coming Home" was chosen by Natasha Trethewey, then Poet Laureate of the United States, to be included Meridian Best New Poets 2007. In 2017, I was invited to read at the Festival Internacional de Poesía en el Caribe, PoeMaRío, in Barranquilla, Colombia. I write most nights between 11:00 PM and 2:00 AM.

Seduction is not simply a strategy for conquest; it is the form taken by an inescapable reversibility — that of the feminine — in a world of masculine production.

— Jean Baudrillard

Beauty is the most tender point of cruelty.

— Georges Bataille

We have geared the machines and locked all / Together into interdependence; we have built the great cities; now / There is no escape.

— Robinson Jeffers. The Purse Seine. 1937.