Ed Roberson

Charles Edwin (Ed) Roberson (born December 26, 1939) is a distinguished American poet, celebrated for his unique diction and intricacy in exploring the natural and cultural worlds. His poetic voice is informed by a background in science and visual art, coupled with his identity as an African American. Roberson has been an active poet since the early 1960s and has authored eight collections, including "Atmosphere Conditions" (1999) and "City Eclogue" (2006). Among his many honors are the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award (1998) and the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award (2008).^[1]

Roberson, the oldest of four boys,^[2] was born and raised in the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,^[3] drawn to visual art and aspiring to be a painter.^[2] His family attended African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.^[4] His father owned a garbage collection company, eventually brought to ruin by organized crime.^[2] Roberson attended George Westinghouse High School and graduated in 1959.^[4]

As a first-generation student, he studied chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, researching limnology, his interests in literature and art left in the background. While in college, his interest and submersion into nature was fed by work-study in forested northern Pennsylvania; his role as a research assistant in Pennsylvania, Alaska's Kodiak and Afognak Islands, and Bermuda; and a cross-country motorcycle trip with his friends Andy Welsh and Dick Vandal in 1970.^[5] He graduated that same year^[3] and later completed graduate work at Goddard College.^[6] His travels were plenty and stimulating for his poetry; he also visited West Africa (Nigeria) in 1980 and the Amazon jungle and the Andes in South America (Peru, Ecuador) on two climbing trips with the Explorers Club of Pittsburgh, in 1963 and 1975. ^[5]

At one point, before completing his degree, Roberson took a break from his studies and held numerous overlapping jobs, working in the Pittsburgh steel mills, for an advertising firm called Film Graphics,^[7] as a tank diver for the Pittsburgh AquaZoo, and as an English literature teacher for Allegheny Community College.^[2][5] His main occupation once out of college, however, was in higher education, in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania as a lecturer and professor until 1973, when he began teaching at Rutgers University in New Jersey.^[5][8] Roberson then transitioned to an administrative position there in the 1980s when his tenure was denied - the same time his father died of cancer, his marriage was dissolving, and his writings were being turned down.^[7] In 2002, he was forced to retire, momentarily, due to his own battle with cancer.^[2]

In 2004, he moved to Chicago from New Jersey, having overcome the battle. There, he taught at Columbia College, the Center for the Writing Arts, and the University of Chicago, and was most recently employed at Northwestern University as a Writer-in-Residence.^[9][6][2][5]

He married Rhonda Wiles, who graduated from Rutgers University Douglas College and Hofstra Law School in New York in May 1973. They had a daughter, Lena, in 1976.^[4]

After graduating in 1967, Roberson embarked on a diverse career, including work in a Pittsburgh steel mill, an advertising graphics firm, and as a diver in Pittsburgh's public aquarium. He taught English at the University of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County Community College before joining Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1973.^[2] During his thirty-year tenure at Rutgers, he held various administrative positions while continuing to indulge his passion for adventure travel, poetry, and motorcycle journeys. In 2003, Roberson relocated to Chicago after leaving Rutgers University. He taught at Columbia College and later became Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Center for the Writing Arts at Northwestern University in 2006.^[1]

Though he began reading poetry in high school (to the dismay of his tenth-grade teacher, who claimed that "the art of poetry had died"),^[7] Ed Roberson only began writing as an undergraduate student, fascinated by sonnets. As editor of Pitt's student literary journal, a few of his early poems appeared there,^[4] but in 1962, his first poem of note, "I Must Be Careful", ^[2] was published in The Atlantic Monthly and won the Grand Prize.^[5]

Ed Roberson's career officially began in 1970 with the release of When Thy King is a Boy, as he was graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. From the start, Roberson proved his merit, with many of his early books published by renowned publishers like the University of Pittsburgh Press.^[10] However, his fame did not skyrocket until much later into his life.

His race, aesthetic, and areas of focus were obstacles for Roberson - but also tools he weaved together in his art. Popular subjects of his poetry include nature (urban as well as natural settings), politics, history, and human behavior, often woven and tied together within each piece. ^[10] His travels and experiences, current events, and societal norms and issues all serve as inspiration for his poems.

His work appears in the literary magazine Callaloo.^[11][12] Roberson has written eleven books of poetry.

Ed Roberson's poetic tapestry is intricately woven with a myriad of influences, creating a unique and multifaceted body of work. His background in earth sciences, particularly limnology, gave him a profound appreciation for the natural world, reflected in the precision and vivid imagery of his poetry. Roberson's exploration of African heritage and black culture, influenced by poets like Langston Hughes and Léopold Sédar Senghor, allows him to talk about wide variety of personal and cultural histories. Early interests in painting and a deep dive into visual art at the Pittsburgh Museum contributed to the visual dimensions of his poetry, evident in his experiments with visual poetry. Engaging with literary traditions and drawing from his extensive travels, including journeys to Nigeria and motorcycle trips across the United States, Roberson's poetry reflects a spirit of adventure and a deep respect for diverse landscapes.^[7]

Roberson delves into the intricate terrain of race and its implications within his poetry. Roberson's approach to this complex theme is characterized by a poetic process rooted in the disruption of language. This disruption takes shape through fragmented narratives and the skillful use of enjambment to imbue end-words with multiple meanings, invoking a spatiotemporal freeze-frame moment, momentarily suspending space and time (Horton, 2015).

Notably, in his collection "To See the Earth Before the End of the World," Roberson crafts a vivid illustration of how race and the concept of color are addressed. He guides his poems through what he terms the "magic hour," where each section engages with aspects of coloring and light (Horton, 2015).

Roberson's exploration of race is grounded in the recognition that race is a social construct, as articulated by Reginald Shepherd, where "blackness as an identity, assumed or imposed, is a social construct, just as whiteness is. But blackness is the marked construct, while whiteness is the default: it fades into a privileged invisibility." Roberson acknowledges the constructed nature of race and the role of skin color in shaping identity. Within this construct, he highlights the importance of both forgetting and remembering, and the resulting complexities of navigating these dynamics (Horton, 2015).

The "magic hour," particularly drawing from cinematography terminology, captures these moments of fragmented distraction, akin to a camera's shutter, sequestering and then releasing images. The spatiotemporal moments within Roberson's poetry present a multifaceted examination of history and the fallacies inherent in the concept of skin color, shaped by social constructs, all within a language that is both agile and revealing.

Roberson's use of conceptual photography goes beyond challenging constructed notions of black and white; it also serves as a method of chronicling history. His poetry, with its dexterity of language and layered meanings, creates an experiential tapestry rather than a traditional narrative. This controlled distraction steps beyond convention to challenge prevailing ideas about color in American society.

In "Chromatic Sequences," the spatiotemporal phenomena unfold, allowing space, time, and connotative meanings to converge through distraction, which restructures the narrative based on polemic structures. Roberson's use of language fragmentation and double-jointed syntax in discussions of race and its residuals compels language to transcend its usual boundaries, as it "forces language to fail, to fall out of itself, to become something other than itself." Within the poem, finite meanings are momentary freeze-frame instances, crystallizing thoughts only to release them from their sequestered state.

Throughout his poetry, Roberson employs history and race as grounding points to incite moments of distraction, reflection, and potential epiphany through memory. This memory is intricately tied to Jacques Derrida's concept of "trace," which "erases itself in presenting itself, muffles itself in resonating." In the context of Roberson's work, this often accompanies the African American experience, with the weight of trauma intertwined with the memories or traces he explores. Roberson's poetry thus presents a nuanced and compelling engagement with the multifaceted dynamics of race and memory (Horton, 2015).

• 1962 Grand Prize from The Atlantic Monthly, for "I Must Be Careful"^[5]
• 1970 selected for Pitt Poetry Series, for When Thy King is a Boy
• 1995 Iowa Poetry Prize, for Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In ^[2]
• 1998 selected for National Poetry Series, for Atmosphere Conditions (chosen by Nathaniel Mackey)^[10]
• 1998 Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award^[10]
• 2000 Lenore Marshall Award finalist, Academy of American Poets’, for Atmosphere Conditions^[10]

• 2008 Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America
• 2016 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry^[13][14]
• 2017 Academy of American Poets Fellowship
• 2020 Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers^[15]
• LA Times Book Award
• Stephen Henderson Critics Award for Achievement in Literature

• Asked What has Changed, Wesleyan University Press, 2022. ISBN 978-0819580108.
• Just In: Word of Navigational Challenges, Talisman House, 1998. ISBN 978-1-883689-79-7.
• Lucid Interval as Integral Music,1984. Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In, University of Iowa Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0-87745-510-3.
• The New Wing of the Labyrinth, Singing Horse Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-935162-42-4.
• Atmosphere Conditions, Sun & Moon Press, 2000. ISBN 978-1557133922.
• From: Picking Up the Tune, the Universe and Planets
• Closest Pronunciation, Northwestern University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-8101-2892-7.
• To See the Earth Before the End of the World, Wesleyan University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-8195-6950-9.^[16]
• City Eclogue, Atelos, 2006. ISBN 978-1891190230.
• Etai-eken, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975. ISBN 978-0-8229-5263-3.
• When Thy King is a Boy, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970. ISBN 978-0-8229-5214-5.
• "From: Picking Up the Tune, the Universe and Planets", Electronic Poetry Center
• "VI. Cape Journal: At Sand Pile", Electronic Poetry Center

• Melissa Tuckey, ed. (2018). Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-5315-9.
• Lyn Hejinian; David Lehman, eds. (2004). "Ideas Gray Suits Bowler Hats Baal". The Best American Poetry 2004. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-5757-2.
• Leonard Schwartz; Joseph Donahue; Edward Halsey Foster, eds. (1996). Primary trouble: an anthology of contemporary American poetry. Talisman House. ISBN 978-1-883689-29-2.

• "Ed Roberson", Poetry Lectures, Poetry Foundation
• Ed Roberson: Poems and Profile at Poets.org