john guzlowski

john guzlowski
Location
Danville, Virginia, USA
Birthday
June 22
Bio
I was born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, and came with my Polish Catholic 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. I write about these people.

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FEBRUARY 13, 2012 10:40PM

Valentine's Day: A World War II Love Story


My parents met in a concentration camp in Germany toward the end of World War II.

My mom had been brought to Germany by the Nazis to work in a slave labor camp. The day she was captured she saw her mom and her sister and her sister's baby killed by German… Read full post »
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FEBRUARY 13, 2012 1:38PM

Valentine's Day: A Holocaust Love Story

My parents met in a concentration camp in Germany toward the end of World War II.

 

My mom had been brought to Germany by the Nazis to work in a slave labor camp. The day she was captured she saw her mom and her sister and her sister's baby… Read full post »

5 Comments
FEBRUARY 12, 2012 9:02PM

Solitude

Solitude?

Someone should write a history of it.

Think about it. Probably for the first million plus years we were here on earth, we were up to our ears in solitude. We'd watched the sky and the horizon for a bit of smoke, listen for the turning of a clumsy wheel or a… Read full post »
10 Comments
FEBRUARY 7, 2012 9:58AM

Who Would Jesus Vote For?

I was reading an article at Salon.com called "Jesus vs. the GOP."
 
The article talks about which of the GOP candidates Jesus would back.
 
It got me thinking.  
 
Who would Jesus support? 

Last time I looked He wasn't an American.

The question itself, however, reveal… Read full post »
9 Comments
FEBRUARY 6, 2012 11:33AM

An Interview with Michal Rusinek, Wislawa Szymborska's Personal Secretary


This is an interview with Michal Rusinek, poet and translator, Assistant Professor at the Department of Polish Language and Literature of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and a personal secretary to the distinguished Polish poet and the laureate of the 1996 Nobel Prize in… Read full post »
1 Comments
FEBRUARY 1, 2012 4:38PM

Wislawa Szymborska Died Today


Wislawa Szymborska died today in Poland.  There was nothing about it in the New York Times, but there probably will be.  She was a great poet and won the Nobel Prize in Poetry back in 1996. 

She is one of my favorite poets.  She has the kind of… Read full post »
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Editor’s Pick
JANUARY 14, 2012 7:59PM

The Day My Mother Died



My mother died six years ago, January 27, 2006. She died in a hospice in Sun City, Arizona. It was a beautiful place, out in the desert, cactus and sage and rocks and reddish sand all around. She would have liked it. Before she got too sick, she used to like/…

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52 Comments
JANUARY 5, 2012 1:47PM

Photographs by German Soldiers


Recently, I came across a site that features thousands of photographs taken by German Soldiers as they invaded Poland and spread across the country.  The site is called Bagnowka.   You can click here to enter it.  

The photos are mundane and touching, directed and random, unexpected and/…

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4 Comments
JANUARY 3, 2012 11:39AM

What We Sign Up For: Poems by Lisa Siedlarz


For years, I've been teaching Lisa Siedlarz' first book of poems (I Dream My Brother Plays Baseball) in my War Stories class.  The book deals with her brother's tour of duty in the Afghanistan War and how his time there has shaped her.  It's an excellent book and always one of/… Read full post »
2 Comments
DECEMBER 21, 2011 2:15PM

The Polish Review seeks Editor-in-Chief


I received the following notice: 

The Polish Review: The Polish Review is a peer-reviewed, international, English language, interdisciplinary academic journal published by the Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences in America with the mission of disseminating scholarly materials in the/… Read full post »
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DECEMBER 21, 2011 2:09PM

Show Up, Look Good: A New Novel by Mark Wisniewski


Mark Wisniewski, author of Confessionsof a Polish Used Car Salesmen, has recently published his second novel, Show Up, Look Good.  The novel relates theadventures of a young Midwestern woman who hopes to get over a failed relationshipby moving to Manhattan. 

Here’s what Kelly Cherry, the… Read full post »
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NOVEMBER 23, 2011 7:08AM

Two Review Poetry Contest Deadline Extended

I just got this information from Jeremy Edward Shiok that Two Review has extended its deadline for its poetry contest, a contest that I am judging. Here's all the info:

Two Review

A Journal of International Poetry & Creative Nonfiction

2011 Poetry Contest

Judge: John Guzlowski

1st Prize: $100 2nd Pri…

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NOVEMBER 18, 2011 3:56PM

Polish American in the Mohawk Valley

I received this note from Daniel Weaver of the journal Upstream:

I have founded a cultural and counter-cultural review here in the Mohawk Valley. Our second issue is going to focus on Polish-Americans in the Mohawk Valley. I have already received a great essay on Joseph Vogel and a…

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NOVEMBER 16, 2011 2:38PM

Artists and Writers: Updates November 2011


I interviewed poet Anne Colwell at the r.kv.r.y. blog, and then she interviewed me. We had fun talking about academic vs creative writing, strong women, and eternal optimism. Check it out by clicking here!

"The Best Five Places for Kissing in Warsaw," Karen Kovacik's poem, appears in the latest issue… Read full post »

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NOVEMBER 14, 2011 2:07PM

Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust

Recently, I watched "Imaginary Witness," a terrific documentary about how Hollywood has depicted the Holocaust, and even though I think I know a lot about both Hollywood and the Holocaust, I found that I learned a number of things from this documentary. I mentioned to Danusha Goska that I had just/… Read full post »

3 Comments
NOVEMBER 4, 2011 7:56PM

Death Fugue by Paul Celan

Paul Celan's Death Fugue is one of the great of the Holocaust. The reading is done by the poet Galway Kinnell.


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To read the poem and learn more about Celan, click on this link to the Poets.Org site. "Death Fugue" appears in Celan's Selected Poems and Prose.
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NOVEMBER 3, 2011 1:10AM

JACOB GLATSTEIN’S PROPHECY

Dara Horn
Jewish Review of Books, Summer 2011

It isn’t every day that one has the opportunity to read a literary masterpiece. But a literary masterpiece that doubles as a work of prophecy? Such books have been rare since the death of Isaiah--which is why this new English/… Read full post »
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OCTOBER 31, 2011 8:59AM

Ode to 7 Billion Human Beings

MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER… Read full post »
5 Comments
OCTOBER 31, 2011 7:57AM

Ode to 7 Billion Human Beings


MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE OVER MOVE/…

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OCTOBER 25, 2011 6:57AM

Two Lives Shaped by World War Two: A Video

Recently, I was invited to do a poetry reading at St. Francis College, Brooklyn, New York. The reading, titled "Two Lives Shaped by World War Two," focused on my parents and their experiences as Polish slave laborers in Nazi Germany.

Here's a video of the poetry reading. It's… Read full post »
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OCTOBER 24, 2011 2:18PM

Tourist Season at Auschwitz by Mark Lewandowski

Polish-American novelist Leslie Pietrzyk has recently started a website called Redux to showcase classic pieces of creative writing that have so far not been published online.

The fifth installment features Mark Lewandowski's essay "Tourist Season at Auschwitz," originally published in The Gettysb
… Read full post »
5 Comments
OCTOBER 20, 2011 11:35AM

Tourist Season at Auschwitz by Mark Lewandowski

Polish-American novelist Leslie Pietrzyk has recently started a website called Redux to showcase classic pieces of creative writing that have so far not been published online.

The fifth installment features Mark Lewandowski's essay "Tourist Season at Auschwitz," originally published in The Ge

… Read full post »
5 Comments
OCTOBER 14, 2011 9:01PM

Rosenbaum on Rosenfeld: A Strong Review of an Important New Book




Faustian Bargain
The singular horror of the Holocaust is being lost in exchange for enshrining rare moments of inspiration and universal narratives of suffering

By Ron Rosenbaum |October 10, 2011 7:00 AM

Alvin Rosenfeld is a brave man, and his new work is courageous. The book [1] is called The… Read full post »
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OCTOBER 7, 2011 4:43PM

Milosz and the Future: A Centenary Festival


Claremont McKenna College is celebrating the centenary of Milosz on Oct. 19-21, and it will feature a number of prominent writers including former US poet Laureate W. S. Merwin, Robert Pinsky, and Polish-American writers Lillian Vallee and Piotr Florczyk.

If I were living anywhere near Clarem… Read full post »
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OCTOBER 3, 2011 3:36PM

Two Review: Contest


I'm going to be judging a poetry contest for Two Review A Journal of International Poetry & Creative Nonfiction.

1st Prize: $100 2nd Prize: $50 3rd Prize: $25

Prizes include publication in the 2012 issue of Two Review. All submissions considered for publication.

Here are the submission… Read full post »
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