Poetry. "In CLOSING DISTANCES, Paul Martin keeps alive for a little longer the people who lived in the working-class town where he grew up. Here are the old Slovak women,husbands, parents, and grandparents, brothers, the racy butcher. Here is the Slovak language that is slowly being forgotten. And here are beauty and sorrow, humor, tenderness and wisdom. In the aptly named 'The Fading Photograph,' a poem about his paternal grandfather, we read, 'Proud old man, forgive me for thinking I understand.' Thing is, Paul Martin does understand, and to read these wonderful, often heartbreaking poems is to share in that understanding and to be uplifted. We are much richer for these poems"--Harry Humes.

Author City: Ironton, PA USA

Paul Martin is the author of the full-lenght collection CLOSING DISTANCES (The Backwaters Presss, 2009) and three chapbooks: Green Tomatoes, Walking Away Waving, and Morning on Canal Street. His poems have appeared in America, Boulevard, Commonweal, 5 AM, New Letters, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, Southern Poetry Review, Texas Poetry Review and other journals. He is the recipient of two poetry fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. CLOSING DISTANCES was twice a finalist in the National Poetry Series. He lives with his wife, Rita, in Ironton, Pennsylvania, and teaches part-time at Muhlenberg College.