In his own words

John Guzlowski

Biographical Note:

I am the son of parents who met in a slave labor camp in Nazi Germany. My parents, my sister and I came to the US as DPs (Displaced Persons) in 1951. We eventually found our way to Chicago, and we settled in the area around St. Fidelis Parish and Humboldt Park. My father and mother worked in various factories in Chicago, and I attended St. Patrick High School and the University of Illinois (Chicago Circle). I took my Ph.D in English at Purdue University. Much of my poetry deals directly or indirectly with my parents' experiences.

My poems have appeared in various magazines (Negative Capability, Madison Review, Manhattan Review, Rhino, Mr. Cogito, Forkroads) but are most readily available in the anthologies Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust and Concert at Chopin's House. I have also written a book of poems about my parents' experience as slave laborers in Nazi Germany. The book is called Language of Mules, and is available from me at cfjzg@eiu.edu

I have also published essays on the Polish-American writers Isaac Bashevis Singer, W. S. Kuniczak, Helen Degen Cohen, and Antoni Gronowicz in such journals as Shofar, AKCENT: literature i sztuka, kwartalnik, Polish Review, Polish American Studies and Studies in American Jewish Literature.

I have also co-written a book on Jack Kerouac and written a number of essays on postmodernist culture that have appeared in such professional journals as Modern Fiction Studies, Critique, Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, and Midwest Quarterly.

I have been teaching 20th Century American Literature, Creative Writing Poetry, and Contemporary American Fiction at Eastern Illinois University since 1981.