Robert Zwilling: Weaving The Macrame Between What Is And What We Think It Is

Evoking the insight of naturalist Loren Eisley and the extrapolative satire of Charles Stross, or Neal Stephenson, this evening’s featured Barnes and Noble Open Mic reader, Robert Zwilling, is an environmental poet and digital artist who blends words and imagery to upturn the conventional proposition enforced by technology and materialism that if we are the rightful subject of creation, then the Earth and the cosmos are necessarily no more than objects in service to human needs.

 

Robert uses a kind of stream-of-consciousness writing style exploring this and other divisive follies, deliriously compressing so many concepts into a single composition, his koan-like poetry and epigrams practically demand repeated readings.

Citing such passages as "Be wary of ghost forests dead on their feet...", “A rat's brain is only a couple hundred times smaller than ours; what does size matter when the memories are real?" and "With no connection to reality, we marvel at consciousness," Virginia Arthur, in her review of his 2018 collection Life Imitating Stars (Kindle), feels Robert’s work is "meant to bend your mind, like literary macrame."

In further pursuit of universal unity, Robert’s latest, Modern Primitive Poetry: 36 Illustrated Titles Without The Words (self-published, 2019) showcases Robert’s digital photography deliberately depicting illustrated titles with the expected text left out in order to elude the „mind’s event horizon that takes everything in and returns back less than a vague idea of what is actually happening.“ 

Asteroid Fever (Dreaming News, 2018), one of his science fiction novels, plays out the murders, intrigues and piracy of a future Gold Rush in the asteroid belt beyond Mars, involving detectives able to see the past imprinted on solid surfaces, a service that hawks dreams for a decent night’s sleep, a cult of space tourists whose brains have been commandeered by nanobots and other factions set against a surreal setting where today’s growing struggle between the actual and virtual worldviews has only matured.

A member of the PoemAlley group, Robert has also released Living In The Event Horizon Of A Big Mud Hole (Books 1 and 2), More Connected Than We Think (Kindle, 2012 and 2016, respectively), Poetry Of Every Thing (Smashwords, 2018) and more on assorted ebook platforms (also available in print editions, on request).

Hosted by Frank Chambers, Barnes & Noble Open Mic meets the second Monday, each month in the movie/music section on the main floor of the Stamford bookstore at 7:15 pm. For more information and directions, contact:

Barnes & Noble

100 Greyrock Place, Suite H009

Stamford, Ct 06901

 203-323-1248