Robert Bethune

In Charnel Rose, Conrad Aiken takes the plunge into a deeply metaphysical and surrealistic world, capturing the essence of one aspect of quintessential humanity: how we create and pursue a deeply personal, intensely idealistic, physically and emotionally draining search for love, and how some of us turn away from real love when we do find it, preferring instead to re-invent and re-amplify our idealistic vision of passionate perfection. He does this...

"In The Man Against The Sky, Edwin Arlington Robinson presents us with a gallery of characters drawn from the streets, homes and gathering places of Tilbury Town, his fictional Northeastern dwelling place. A mysterious compelling stranger, a woman living on charity, a welcoming home - this and other portraits give us a compelling and perceptive view of the range of human character and feeling. As if to widen the horizons of Tilbury Town, he also imagines...

The beautiful, elegant, heartbreakingly sad story of Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur is Ediwn Arlington Robinson's subject in his 1920 novella in verse, "Lancelot." His focus throughout is is on one side of the triangle, that of Lancelot and Guinevere. As in his previous Arthurian poem, "Merlin," he does not give us Malory's tales of jousts and tournaments; he sets his poem instead in the quiet moments of reflection, hope, anger, forgiveness, remorse...

In the days of Tammany Hall, politicians like George Washington Plunkitt spent their careers in service to the city--but first and foremost in the service of the political machine. Plunkitt seems never to have doubted exactly where he stood on the deeply corrupt, yet amazingly effective politics and government in which he spent his life; he was entirely in favor of it, and gave it his devoted service while becoming a millionaire in return. He was...

In 1921, Edwin Arlington Robinson was only 52 and many of the pieces in his Collected Poems were written long before that. Yet he shows gifted understanding of old age, the passage of time, the slow decline that everyone must suffer, and the final cease and release of death. Isaac, in Isaac and Archibald, puts it very well to the poet's twelve-year-old alter ego: ""But even unto you, and your boy's faith, Your freedom, and your untried confidence,...

Renowned poet A. E. Housman published only two volumes of poetry during his lifetime: A Shropshire Lad, for which he is best remembered, and the equally eloquent Last Poems (1922). Both collections explore many of the same themes. Housman introduced this book, "I publish these poems, few though they are, because it is not likely that I shall ever be impelled to write much more." Another book, More Poems, was published shortly after his death in 1936....

Five wonderful stories by Ambrose Bierce, full of vivid characters, precise and evocative language, surprises and suspense. Written more than a century ago, these stories still capture the imagination with vivid, precise language that bites--and may even draw blood! This Freshwater Seas production presents these five classic stories performed by Susie Berneis and Robert Bethune, with subtle musical underscoring to enhance and enrich Bierce's words....

Here are two terrifying and sobering stories of ghosts who will stop at nothing! "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" Which did she really want: her sister's husband, or her sister's trousseau? Will her desires cost her her life? In this story by the American master Henry James, a woman loses her heart to a man, but then loses that man to her sister. When her sister dies, she finally marries him, and her sister's trousseau comes to her as well - along...

In this set of "Uncanny Tales," Mary Louisa Molesworth deftly makes us feel the shiver of ghostly mystery without actually giving us a ghost! Or, to put it another way, she's interested in a different kind of ghostly presence. In "The Man with the Cough", it is the ghostly presence of a secret agent, and the ghostly experience of events that seem like a dream, but have real-world consequences. In "Halfway Between the Stiles", it is the ghostly presence...