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Rob Crisell is an author, actor, teacher, and Shakespearean in Temecula, CA. He teaches poetry and Shakespeare with the Murrieta Valley Union School District as part of its Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) program. He is a Shakespeare lecturer with Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. He has acted in The Merchant of Venice, Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged), Baskerville, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Tempest (Prospero), Macbeth, Othello (Iago), and others. Over the quarantine, he has acted in Much Ado About Nothing and Merry Wives of Windsor (with Nathan Agin’s “A Working Actor’s Journey production) and King Lear (Quarantine Players). He has written and performed several one-man plays featuring Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Shakespeare in America. He’s the author of Shakespeare’s Book of Wisdom: Advice on Living a Wiser, Happier Life from William Shakespeare & Friends (DePortola Press 2018). His 2016 TED Talk is “How NOT to Hate Shakespeare.” His verse adaptation of Sophocles’ Electra will be produced by Full Circle Players in Riverside, California in October 2020. He is a graduate of Yale University and George Mason University Law School. For details, visit www.robcrisell.com or www.facebook/robcrisellactor/.

Two more poems from The Lyric (Winter 2021)

Here are two more of my poems published in Lyric poetry magazine. These are from the winter 2020 issue. I hope to submit more work to the magazine soon.

SEA SONG

By Rob Crisell

I rest here on the ocean floor,

But once I rode upon the foam,

And carried soldiers off to war,

And bore them safely home. 

Now light drifts down to me below

As I gaze up at sapphire sky.

Upon my back bright starfish grow,

Within my chest dwell octopi.

An icy current weaves its way

Across my bones of rusted steel,

Reminding me of thrilling days

When gallant captains turned my wheel.

But I don’t mourn my damaged pride, 

Nor for my mortal labors long. 

I dream the salt and sigh the tide,

And sing the sea’s eternal song.

HAMLET AT FIFTY

By Rob Crisell

A plot twist—Hamlet reaches middle age:

Claudius is killed at prayer some years before, 

Allowing Gertrude’s son to take the stage

With bride Ophelia, at Elsinore. 

He trades his scholar’s eye for Denmark’s throne,

His antic disposition vindicated;

His people prosperous, his children grown,

His father’s spirit well propitiated. 

And yet he wonders: Did he miss the point?

Did easy living dull his poet’s heart?

No tragic flaw; no time that’s out of joint;

Not even players move him with their art. 

He drinks his wine to spur the years along,

Suspecting someone, somewhere, got it wrong. 

Two Poems from The Lyric (Fall 2020)

Here are two more of my poems published in Lyric poetry magazine. These are from the fall 2020 issue.

SOUL OF ART

By Robert Crisell

Wherein resides the soul of art–

The head or hands or restless heart?

Is it Chopin, Flaubert, Magritte?

Is it graffiti on a street?

A verse or picture that instills

Our mind with awe, our flesh with chills,

Might be the work of journeymen,

But does it matter in the end?

No matter craft or messy muddle,

No matter blunt or super-subtle,

Our endless longing to create

Is spirit-sent, immaculate.

DESERT SOULS

By Robert Crisell

The vacant plains of arctic poles

Are nothing to our desert souls

When inward springs that nourish us

Dissolve to dust. 

The dust entwines us, blinds our vision, 

Abandons us without provision,

Confounds our spirit, till at last

Our hearts are ash.

But in the end, our mortal sting

Is cured by sempiternal spring,

That stirs the blood and melts the frost,

Redeeming cost.

Be grateful for your days of mirth,

But gather grain in case of dearth

And water for a time of drought,

And bear it out. 

Six of My Poems Published in The Lyric Magazine

I haven’t updated this site in a while, but I thought I’d let you know that my poetry has been published in the last three issues of The Lyric (summer 2020, fall 2020 & spring 2021), a 100-year-old poetry journal out of Vermont. Sadly, the poems are only available in the hard copy magazine, not online. This is a link to their main website if you’d like to order a copy.

In the meantime, I’m going to reprint the six poems over the next three posts, beginning with my pieces from the summer 2020 issue. The poems from that issue are “Night Chorus” and “Father Fears.”

NIGHT CHORUS

By Rob Crisell

Inside the fountain’s hedge, a thousand frogs

Flood midnight in infinite iambic song.

The heavy storms sowed them like dragon’s teeth. 

And now, slime-green soldiers leap from the soil

To flabbergast their enemies and lovers,

With juddering harmonies, resounding

Belches that rattle bedroom windowpanes, 

And chirps high-pitched enough to make dogs wince.

An apparition sweeps across the moon,

Alighting on the fountain, its wings spread wide.

All sounds cease as summoned silence, quickening

And rising out of the writhing earth, unwinds 

Its velvet limbs and mossy trunk, bestriding

House and garden, humankind and universe—

A god of night, a dream colossus, watchman.

A bullfrog’s bass note interrupts the spell. 

The spirit’s gone. The Earth erupts again.

FATHER FEARS

By Rob Crisell

He takes up arms against his father’s reign;

Rejects the olive branch and seeks out wars. 

With marksman’s eye he conquers new terrain;

The friends he once held dear he now abhors. 

I give offense because I represent 

The foe he dreads he may or may not be.

Behind his walls he hurls his discontent.

He will define himself away from me.

But all my ships are burned—the siege goes on.

I scan the barricades for gaps or flaws;

Above the parapets I look for dawn;

I search for firelight through portcullis jaws. 

My father, too, laid siege on me for years.

His triumph soothes his grown son’s father fears.