Len Roberts (March 13, 1947 - May 25, 2007) taught English at NCC for 30 years and published 12 books of poetry, some receiving awards; his 1988 book Black Wings earning him the highly regarded National Poetry Series Award. Beyond the assignments and the awards, Len affected all of those around him with his good nature, and most of all his devotion to his family. (thencccommuter.org)

Dr. Len Roberts, who has been teaching in the English Department at Northampton Community College for thirty years, is the author of ten books of poetry, three books of translations (from Hungarian to English), a Gale Research literary autobiography, and several articles on various authors and the teaching of writing.

His poems have been published in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Hudson Review, Paris Review, Partisan Review, and others. His most recent volume of translations of the renowned Hungarian poet, Sándor Csoóri, is titled Before and After the Fall: New Poems by Sándor Csoóri (BOA Editions, 2004). The book was selected as part of the Lannan Foundation’s Literary Translation Series. He also has a published text, To Write a Poem, which shows beginning writers the basic steps in writing a poem.

In addition to his publications, Dr. Roberts has received numerous awards for his poetry, including a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Awards, a National Poetry Series Award, six Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Awards, and a Witter Bynner Award, among others. His most recent book, The Silent Singer: New and Selected Poems (2001), was one of five finalists for the Paterson Poetry Prize.

During his career, Dr. Roberts also has received numerous teaching awards, including Teacher of the Year at Northampton Community College, Teacher of the Year for the Association of American Junior and Community Colleges, and Northampton Community College Alumni Association Teacher of the Year. He was a Fulbright Scholar in American Literature to Hungary (1988-89), Hungary and Rumania (1991), and Finland (1994). He has also been a visiting professor of creative writing at Muhlenberg College, Lafayette College, and the Graduate School/Writing Project at the University of Pittsburgh.

Download Cohoes Theater by Len Roberts

PDF format, 244KB, 66Pages.

Cohoes Theater, the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, 76 University Drive, Hazleton, PA 18202, is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them.

Copyright © 1999, 2005 Len Roberts
Originally published by MOMENTUM PRESS, 512 Hill St., Apt.4, Santa Monic, California 90405; 1980.

Magazines in which the following poems previously appeared are: After-Image, Alabama University Review of the Arts, Bird Effort, Colorado-North Review, Dark Horse, Greenfield Review, Hanging Loose, Impact: An International Magazine of Contemporary Literature & the Arts, Kansas Quarterly, Long Pond Review, Massachusetts Review, Momentum, Northwest Review, Poetry Miscellany, Poetry Now, Red Cedar Review, The Smith, West Branch, Wind/ Literary Journal, Wisconsin Review, Xanadu.

The Pennsylvania State University is an equal opportunity University.

Table of Contents
Using Equations............................................................. 6
Coal ..............................................................................7
Fighting......................................................................... 8
Lines of Rain ............................................................... 10
Wind over Land........................................................... 11
Drunk in the Snow ......................................................12
Ritual .......................................................................... 13
Rebuilding a House Near the Delaware River ................15
Making Breakfast ......................................................... 16
The Servant ................................................................. 17
First Rooms ................................................................. 18
Floating ....................................................................... 19
The Whole Way ........................................................... 21
On Waking from a Dream of Coal Miners .................... 22
One More Thing.......................................................... 23
Because It Is Autumn ................................................... 25
More Dead Indians ......................................................26
Beauty and the Nuclear Reactor at Three-Mile Island .... 28
De-Barking ..................................................................30
Flip ............................................................................. 31
Falling ......................................................................... 33
Dear Mother................................................................34
From Fish Skull to Whale Rib-Bones ............................ 35
Bubbles .......................................................................36
Wrapping ....................................................................37
Rowboat ......................................................................38
Grandfather ................................................................. 39
Cohoes Falls ................................................................40
Standing on the Dirt and Junk-littered Floor ................41
4,000 Indians .............................................................. 42
A Sex Story ..................................................................43
Five Years.....................................................................45
The Nuclear Reactor Has Gone Haywire ......................46
“When You Can’t Get Across, Get Across” .................... 47
Either Way ..................................................................49
After I Walk You to Your Valiant...................................50
Cohoes ........................................................................51
Muskrat Maze .............................................................. 61

Using Equations

Sitting here in a Pennsylvania afternoon grading papers just
before mid-term break I read a technical report about
blueprints and think of you in the ground,

how you came home after Vo-Tech school to drink beer and turn
the kitchen light on to read books or draw lines/ your
thin hands moving on that paper in a way they never did before,

folding and unfolding like a bird’s wings always about to
take off/ sketching foundations for swimming pools roads
and homes in those nights.

I can still see the white bread buttered with sugar sprinkled
on it and you pushing the chair back to play the harmonica
and teach us how to tap dance on the cracked linoleum.

Father there are millions of men right now with rulers and
pencils drawing themselves into the hours of this night
with circles and lines/ using equations only a human
could comprehend,

men with eyes under lights erasing the slightest mistake/
starting over again and again until it’s almost impossible
to find an error

Even then I watched your hands clasp and unclasp the beer
then the pencil as though they could draw out the miles
you spent on the Golden Eagle truck delivering bread

to women limping out of their two-room houses in Schylersville
Mechanicsville and Pottstown where the men mine coal

as though those circle rectangles hyperbolas or parallel lines
could bring you where you wanted to go.

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