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

Regarding seduction: Where a linear movement knocks against the wall of consciousness and acquires only meager gains, seduction has the obliquity of a dream element or stroke of wit, and as such traverses the psychic universe and its different levels in a single diagonal, in order to touch, at the far end …
- Jean Baudrillard

It was his conviction, after years of reflection, that all the energy spent seeking happiness brought no more results than if one had decided to sit absolutely still, studying cloud patterns, until the end came.
- Attributed to Japanese film Director, Naruse.

In God’s littlest, the urge toward being and enduring, a soulless mite wills its continuity with all the force and fury of our own mammoth human longing.
- Cynthia Ozick

Our business here is not to live, but to live happily.
- A.E. Housman

Power lies in both the possession of beauty and the ability to either withhold it, or to allow only the most "shuttered" glimpse of it. Real power is the power to promise and to suspend that promise, indefinitely.
- Georges Bataille

Man has never been the same since God died. He has taken it very hard... He gets along pretty well, as long as it is daylight…but it's all no use. The moment it begins to get dark, as soon as it is night, he goes out and howls over the grave of God.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay, Conversation At Midnight

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

Don’t knock on any door like a beggar.
- Rimi

Everyone has a story to tell that is more interesting than the story they tell.
- Robert A.B. Sawyer

The real competition in life is for ears. The pursuit of power or fame, merely a struggle to monopolize ears. We want people to hear our story. We want captive audiences. We want others to learn our story. We tell our stories like merchants in the bazaar—cajoling, beseeching, threatening. We tell them quickly, often too quickly—afraid we’ll lose the ears of our listeners to more gifted storytellers.
- Robert A.B. Sawyer

I must fill my pockets with bright stones.
- George Hitchcock

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

 

Mine Is a Career That Has Been Described As “Haphazard but Not Indiscriminate”

Robert

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

I write for my pleasure and yours.

“Word, words, words.” I am agnostic as to the media in which my words, poems or stories appear. The rightness of the ideas matter to me, as well as their legibility. Affect, yes. Longevity, not so much.

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 breakthrough communications–executed across sundry and various channels, from print and broadcast to outdoor and various digital media.

As a business writer I understand and enjoy the fact that my job is to create or clarify meaning and to execute smart, lucid communications that persuade and communicate. My career has spanned businesses as varied as automotive and retail, luxury, beauty and fashion, as well as media, medical technology and financial services.

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.