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.
MY RECENT POSTS
- Mother's Day
May 11, 2013 10:53AM - "Letter to Levertov from
Butte, Montana"
May 08, 2013 01:18PM - Chaos
May 06, 2013 12:05PM - Nightmare's End--One Young
Soldier's Story
May 02, 2013 04:18PM - Language and Loss
April 26, 2013 03:30PM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “Thank you all for
helping me celebrate my
mother's day. My
mom wasn't
always the…”
May 11, 2013 06:11PM - “Thanks for sharing
this.
Sometimes I
think that the best of all
genres -- for tr…”
May 09, 2013 08:36AM - “I think it was the
drinking that got him into the
pit. I know
it hit me that
way…”
May 08, 2013 02:48PM - “Cheryl, yes the legal
industry! When I first started
to track
down the soc
secur…”
May 06, 2013 04:14PM - “They sent me home to do
it online, and got through
half of it
and saw a request
f…”
May 06, 2013 04:00PM
Mother's Day
Mother’s Day Poem
I remember my mother, her old house,
the miracle of her love, her fingers
on my cheek brushing away the night,
the world coming home for breakfast,
her eyes asking if I’d been on the
… Read full post »"Letter to Levertov from Butte, Montana"
There are a lot of poems that I love, and one of them is Richard Hugo's prose poem "Letter to Levertov from Butte."
I don't remember when I first read it. Maybe in grad school, maybe earlier, but I know what it means to me.
It brings… Read full post »
Chaos
Spent the morning with Social Security, trying to apply for medicare which I am not eligible for (though I'm going to be 65 on June 22--no gifts please).
But I need a letter of ineligibility so that I can continue my eligibility with my State of Illinois
… Read full post »Nightmare's End--One Young Soldier's Story
My wife's Uncle Buddy was one of the GIs who liberated the many concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Several years ago he was interviewed by documentarians making a film about the liberation of the camps.
Here's a link to the youtube.
Language and Loss
My friend the writer Christina Sanantonio and I have been having a conversation about writing about loss. It’s a conversation that started right after the suicide of the novelist David Foster Wallace. I posted two blogs about his death and the deaths of writers in general and what… Read full post »
Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War
Only the Dead
At first, the men of the burial battalion had tried to bury the dead. They dug big trenches and deep ditches, and threw the bodies in, and covered them with lime. Then, the chaplain came and prayed over them, and told… Read full post »
On April 11, 1945, American troops liberated Buchnewald Concentration Camp. It was a large camp housing about 80,000 prisoners, Poles, Slovenians, Frenchmen, Africans, and others. They were brought there to work in the factories that the Germans built in and around the camp.
… Read full post »
Atheism?
I saw the following poster and thought it was pretty interesting.
Well, Atheism makes as much sense to me as Christianity.
What's Christianity teach us?
God throws the first two people out into the cold because they ate an apple he told them not to.
Then when people… Read full post »
What My Father Believed -- An Easter Post
My father grew up in poverty, an orphan working on a farm in Poland. When he was 20, he was taken to a concentration camp in Germany. He didn't have much education at all, could barely read and write. But he had faith. This is a poem about what he… Read full post »
Weather Update
1000 MUST READ NOVELS
1000 Must Read Novels! That's what the UK Guardian says. So take a look at the list. Get an eyeful. And it's definitive!
I love lists like this.
I love the fact also that you must read them.
And what happens if you don't? Do you die? Develop acne?… Read full post »
Open Letter to Dianne Schuch - Lindsey
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 »
Pope Resigns. No kidding.
Pope Benedict XVI resigned. Here's his official statement.
Dear Brothers,
I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three
canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great
importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly
examined my conscience before… Read full post »
The Last Day of Life on Earth
My short short short story "The Last Day of Life on Earth" appears in the recent Atticus Review. Take a look if you get a chance.
It begins:
On the last day of life on earth, a little boy asked his mother for a drink of water,… Read full post »
A Poem for the Time of the Flood
The following is a poem by the great Polish poet and Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska:
Into the Ark
An endless rain is just beginning.
Into the ark, for where else can you go,
you poems for a single voice,
private exultations,
unnecessary talents,
surplus curiosity,
short/… Read full post »
Storm Update
I got this from my friend Gregory F. Tague who lives in Brooklyn, NY: :
Four trees down on our block alone. One tree split in two. Trees on houses. One car totally smashed. Multiply that scenario across the city, across the tri-state area. Subways flooded. Bridges closed. Tunnels flooded.… Read full post »
Bad Starbucks!
I've been going to Starbucks for so long that probably the first time I went there I was still smoking Pall Mall cigarettes over my coffee.
And today, for the first time ever, I had a bad experience. Usually the baristas are great, but today they overcharged me for a… Read full post »
Do We Learn Anything from History?
Do we learn from history? As my mother would say, "That's the question."
Maybe what history teaches us is that the only good we can ever have is that SUV, that Lexus or Infiniti.
Forget trying to change the global community. Forget trying to get justice… Read full post »
Autumn: Fog
In Danville, Virginia we go to sleep early.
Wake in the dark morning as the birds are thinking about doing the
same.
Each day is the same as the day before, and different.
Today there was a fog so thick that even the birds couldn't sing
through it.
_____________/… Read full post »
Sept 11, 2001--Joe Calendrillo's Story
I received the following from Joe Calendrillo, Linda's cousin and
the son of Michael
Calendrillo who I've written about before at
my Lightning
and Ashes blog.
Joe read my post on "Sept.
11--The Short View" and wanted to tell me what that day
meant to him.
He/… Read full post »
Sept. 11--The Short View
I got a letter on Sept. 12, 2001, from my friend Bill Anderson who tended to take a cynical view of people and government and the human animal in general. The following was the response I wrote to him that day:
I wish I could take the… Read full post »
Sept. 1, 1939: The Day the War Started
73 years ago on September 1. 1939, the Germans invaded Poland. Their blitzkrieg, their lightning war, came from the air and the sea and the sky. By Sept 28, Warsaw, the capital city of Poland, gave up. By October 7, the last Polish resistance inside Poland ended. In the… Read full post »
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