Robert Schultz – författare

Masters of New York is a story of one man conquering evil on behalf all of mankind. Joey Patroni has just returned to New York City after serving in Iraq. He has taken a job as driver for one of Americas most powerful men, David Rockefeller. As Joey travels through New York City along with brothers David and Laurance to meet the delegates of the ancient and highly secretive Red and Green Societies, they dare to cross paths with a gentleman from the oldest family of New York Citys eastern establishment, Mr. Alex William Bayard Van Cortlandt Van Rensselaer, the holder of the mysterious Book of Ages. The Red and Green Societies share co-ownership in the highest-priced real estate in the world, Midtown Manhattans Rockefeller Center. The two groups vie for support from the historic land owner, the regent of Columbia University, Alex Van Rensselaer. The Van Rensselaers have been masters of this land since the discovery of the New World and from their inherited land and patroonship of Rensselaerswyck. They may be the ultimate power in the state of New York. The third generation and upstart family of the Rockefellers have seen their fortune and power rise since the time of the American Civil War. David Rockefeller finds that his power is far from being absolute, as it is being pulled on from the past as well as the present. As the three parties break from a simple land deal into a push for all-out war, it has become apparent to Joey that the world in which we live must change. The time has come to pass the burning torch of wealth and power on to new players, but pass the torch on to whom?

In the title poem of Into the New World Robert Schultz takes the reader on a walk around the World Trade Center site shortly after its destruction. In response to this event, the book ranges through the extremes of war and peace, as well as backwards and forwards in time, searching for shards out of which to build an enabling, humane perspective.Schultz''s voice is distinctive, yet he also has fashioned poems out of the nation-shaping prose of Emerson, Thoreau, and William James. Others are spoken in the voice of a Confederate surgeon, an American GI, and a Khmer Rouge photographer. The poems treat wars past and current; the vivid presences of nature; love, marriage, and family--always seeking moments of lyric insight. Such moments occur as the speaker paddles across a shimmering lake, walks at night next to the black reflective wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, or, courtesy of NASA, gazes at the rocky plains of Mars. Schultz writes mostly in free verse, but he also adapts the music of forms ranging from the sonnet to the ghazal to Dante''s terza rima. In its variety and generosity, Into the New World fashions poem-sized meeting places that invite us to be less divided from one another, less alone.