The first word that comes to mind is brilliant. As a 19 year old hotshot in the English department at Western Maryland College (just rescued from the factories), I thought I knew just about everything, but he quickly showed me otherwise. I took several classes from him, including one on the New Novel in which Malloy, Malone, and those other Beckett novels were part and parcel. This allowed Bob to indulge his black humor and his cynical wit, much of which was lost on his dewy, starry-eyed charges at Western Maryland College. What I most enjoyed were my private conversations with him. I showed him my poetry, of course, because everyone knew that he was a good poet, and he suggested that my shocking works were not shocking enough. It was good advice, which I now regularly pass on to young poets seeking to shock. Now looking at his poems, I see that he was indeed a fine craftsman, leaning towards the Confessional poets, who were all the rage way back when. After he killed himself, I remember sitting up all night by myself at my security guard post working through his manuscripts in an attempt to divine the intention behind certain worksheets and scraps of poems. “Death, I Will Do You In” was one of the resulting poems. It’s too bad. Perhaps he would have become a major voice. I’ve heard that he was a good friend of Al Poulin, so his potential connections with “Po-Biz” were there. He is buried in Westminster Cemetery with an excerpt from the famous poem by Yeats on his tomstone. You know, the one that goes “Cast a Cold eye…” And ends with the passing of a horseman. Rest in peace, Robert W. Lawler.

Well, time to sign off and get some lunch.