John L. Stanizzi, Author at INVERSE JOURNAL

John L. Stanizzi

John L. Stanizzi is author of “Ecstasy Among Ghosts”, “Sleepwalking”, “Dance Against the Wall”, “After the Bell”, “Hallelujah Time!”, “High Tide – Ebb Tide”, “Four Bits – Fifty 50-Word Pieces”, and “Chants”. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Connecticut River Review, and many others. Stanizzi has been translated into Italian and his poems have appeared in many journals in Italy. His translator is Angela D’Ambra. Stanizzi teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, Connecticut, and lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

POND: Five Poems by John L. Stanizzi

February 11, 2019 | Poetry

All the way from New England, poet and literature professor John L. Stanizzi brings us five poems from his ongoing book project entitled “POND.” The poet explains, “Every day, for one year, I will walk to our pond [here in Connecticut], jot down a few notes, and take a photo or two. Then I’ll write a 4-line acrostic poem using P, O, N, D as my first letters, with the extra caveat of never using the same first-word twice. I began the book on November 9, 2018 – will finish November 9, 2019.” Stanizzi carries forward the centuries-old tradition of poetry motivated by the human encounter with nature and more precisely with winter (especially since the 16th century). In these poems an original application of poetic language, coupled with a distinctive use of imagery, reveals that such a tradition is alive and necessary to further articulate experiences that many times are difficult to capture with words. Stanizzi’s innovation is the challenge of doing so in an acrostic format while retaining the vastness of the subject at hand. The brevity of each poem limited to the four verses set by their acrostic form conveys that such brevity suffices to contain the magnitude of experience made communicable so exceptionally well in each of these five poems.