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.

Working for advertising agencies and with graphic design firms, as well as directly for local, national and global corporations, I have helped build brands, develop positionings and create successful communications–executed across sundry and various channels, from print and broadcast to outdoor and various digital 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.

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.