Robert E. Blackwell first began writing poetry during the late 1970s while a high school junior.  His interest became a passion during the mid-1980s, and after a quiet decade, that passion fanned into flame in late 2002.  His original style was originally confined to mixed metrical poetry involving four-line stanzas comprised of ten syllables per line; this style became the basis for his first collection, "The Ten-Digit Poet."  Inspired by the work of Amiri Baraka, he began to explore free verse poetry and has now adopted it as a primary style showcased in the collection "My Flying Dreams."  A combination of traditional rhyme and free verse focuses on religious and spiritual themes in "Sunshine for the Soul" and the follow-up collection "Sunshine for the Soul, Volume 2." Robert's first published work, "A Tear," appeared in the anthology Our Picturesque Ruins (Watermark Press, ISBN 0-7951-5142-X) in December, 2002.