Pic of the Day - February 20, 2009

My picture today was taken of a guest speaker we had in our University of Richmond class Friday night. The class is the History of Human Expression, and the content this night could not have been more appropriate. Our speaker was John Guzlowski, who read some of his poetry to us and fielded some questions. I bought two of his books, and they are amazing.

His story is absolutely memorizing. Instead of trying to introduce him to you, simply read his own introduction from his blog.......

"I was born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, and came with my parents Jan and Tekla and my sister Donna to the United States as Displaced Persons in 1951. My parents had been slave laborers in Nazi Germany. Growing up in the immigrant and DP neighborhoods around Humboldt Park in Chicago, I met Jewish hardware store clerks with Auschwitz tattoos on their wrists, Polish cavalry officers who still mourned for their dead horses, and women who walked from Siberia to Iran to escape the Russians. My poems try to remember them and their voices. These poems have appeared in my chapbook Language of Mules and in both editions of Charles Fishman’s anthology of American poets on the Holocaust, Blood to Remember. Since retiring from teaching American Literature in 2005, I've written two new books about my parents. My new poems about them appear in my books Lightning and Ashes (Steel Toe Books, 2007) and Third Winter of War: Buchenwald (Finishing Line Press). Third Winter was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Literature."

His blog can be found at http://everythings-jake.blogspot.com/

The blog about his parents can be found at: http://lightning-and-ashes.blogspot.com/

Thanks John for such a memorable evening!