Poetry. "These brilliant poems virtually flash with the life force. They affirm that joy is what we are meant to experience, despite the `low sideboard of grief.' They are rich journeys into the extraordinary, the particular, even the everyday. Jerry Mirskin shows us that only caught in the act of love, for a mate, a child, the universe, do we become truly human"--Elaine Terranova.

Author City: ITHACA, NY USA

Jerry Mirskin was born in the Bronx, NY, and has lived in California, Wisconsin and Maine. He has worked as a herdsman on a dairy farm, as a carpenter, and as a New York State Poet-in-the-Schools. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies (see below), and he has presented his work, and given workshops, at universities, colleges, public libraries, art centers, and on television. He is currently an Associate Professor at Ithaca College and regularly teaches select courses at Cornell University. His first collection, PICTURE A GATE HANGING OPEN AND LET THAT GATE BE THE SUN, was published in 2002, by Mammoth Books after being chosen for first prize in the Mammoth Books Prize for Poetry. A new collection, entitled IN FLAGRANTE DELICTO, was released in October 2008.