Robert P. Arthur is a poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, critic and professor. His book of poetry, Hymn to the Chesapeake, was the best selling book in the history of Road Publishers and has been produced as a musical play of the same name and been performed on grants in St. Petersburg, Russia; as well as in Washington; New York; Maryland; and all throughout Virginia.
Recently, Arthur's Vija's War was nominated by the Poetry Society of Virginia for the Library of Virginia's poetry book award; his novel, Master William and the Finman, won the Mary Ann Farley Award for Fiction; and his poetry won the Jean S. Desmond Ekphrastic Poem Prize and the J. Franklin Dew Award (1st HM).
Arthur has written more than twenty books. Books of poems include one forth of Quartet, Hymn to the Chesapeake, Strokes, and Vija's War. He has also written a play in contemporary poetry (Phadra), two historical plays in poetic rhetoric (King over the Water and The Libertine), and, most importantly, eleven poem/plays that have been published, as well as produced.
A typical poem/play, which he may have invented, consists of a series of poems, with music, put together with elements of plot, rising action, and dramatic arc, and is designed to be both read as a book and produced as a play.
It is difficult to say how many poem/plays Arthur has written (or compiled with the addition of other poets' poems, including Shakespeare's) because he composes them for any and all occasions and often springs them on audiences during his readings. Many of his poem plays are adapted from his own books of poetry and particular poems are likely to appear in more than one work.
The most popular of his poem/plays, Hymn to the Chesapeake, is an adaptation of Hymn to the Chesapeake, his best-known book. Other well-known poem/plays are Threshold to America (the Jamestown Story,) Crazy Horse's Woman, (a philosophical romance), and Appalachian Moons, not yet published, but often performed in various configurations.
Other produced and/or plays and poem/plays include: The Haunting, Love's Journey, Winter Tales by Candlelight, A Chesapeake Celebration, Matins of the Sook, Lonely in Onley, The Ghost of Marina, Fut Gar and the Nature of Evil, Guests of the Nation, Floyd Collins and the White Angels of Sand Cave, Snow, Horse Hammock Point, The Music of Leaves, and Jellies and Jam.
Hymn to the Chesapeake, Jellies and Jam, the Music of Leaves, and Fut Gar and the Nature of Evil have been produced as dance theate; and Threshold to American has been produced as a concert on a Virginia tour by the Eastern Vinginia Brass Quartet.
