John L. Stanizzi
author of ten collections of poetry; poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, the New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, the Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Rust & Moth, Connecticut River Review, Hawk & Handsaw, and elsewhere; coordinator of the Fresh Voices Poetry Competition for Young Poets at Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, CT; also a teaching artist for the national recitation contest, Poetry Out Loud; former New England Poet of the Year; teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT
LANGUAGES Front Street Hartford, Connecticut 1944
My father, who raised roses and rifles, who survived with eight siblings in four rooms and emerged with nothing onto the street where the ghosts of vendors still haunt the light of waning summer nights, who left with just the scraps of two languages, neither of which could hide the truth, crossed the river which had swallowed his family more than once, and settled in to a tiny square house in a field where only moments ago plowshares toiled through harvest-days until the stubble field stretched from the forest to the road where my father would drive back and forth hardening his loneliness with silence.
from Chants by John L. Stanizzi (Cervena Barra Press)