Charlie Robert is a writer and poet living in the Bay Area of California. Spare and unforgiving, his work utilizes a punchy rhythmic verse, peopled with characters heroically flawed. He has been published in several literary journals/small press anthologies, including The Opiate, Milk and Cake Press, The Broken City, Orchards Poetry Journal, to name a few. Last Rap, which narrates the final demise of various historical and cultural icons ranging from Marie Antoinette to King Kong, is his first poetry collection and he is delighted to have The Opiate Books bring it to publication.
Last Rap
In this unexpected and highly-tailored-in-theme collection of poetry, Charlie Robert takes the notion of what an elegy can be and turns it on its ear. Homing in on over forty varied legends across history and “specialization,” Robert finds humor and, yes, even joy in the concept of death.
Of course, not everyone gets that slant. Some deaths, after all, are impossible to spin into a “celebration of life” (take, for example, Topsy the Elephant). Even so, what Robert achieves here with his debut is nothing short of a defiant coup (words Marie Antoinette is never fond of hearing) against Death, as he dances around it with words and wit that dare the reader not to crack a smile. And, yes, there are even a few unlikely subjects that Robert manages to “eulogize” as well (here’s looking at you, Pluto—the erstwhile planet, not the cartoon dog).
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