Description
Poetry. "Someone walks around town, sees things and writes them down. He remembers what people say to him: 'The planes kept going / transporting a strange cargo, bodies packed in ice and oranges.' He might be furtive: 'Try not to look at the others, / on the way in, and out.' He knows that 'the world is made up of little stories' in which dreams and everyday events switch places. The movie might make no sense, but the poetry of Leonard Gontarek sure does. It makes sense the way 'Everything [is] heightened in the crosshairs of God.' And that is the kind of sense you need these days to get on in a world where 'someone dressed as a funeral director [keeps] dropping a hand in your lap/in a movie theater.'"—John Yau
Author Bio
Leonard Gontarek is the author of seven books of poems, including TAKE YOUR HANDS OUT OF MY POCKET, SHIVA (Hanging Loose Press, 2016), St. Genevieve Watching over Paris, Van Morrison Can't Find His Feet, Zen for Beginners and Déjà Vu Diner. His poems have appeared in the anthologies The Best American Poetry, The Working Poet and Joyful Noise: American Spiritual Poetry. A mainstay of the Philadelphia poetry scene, he coordinates that city's Poetry Festival and poetry workshops in the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership. He twice received poetry fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and was the 2011 Philadelphia Literary Death Match Champion. He hosts the Green Line Café Reading and Interview Series.
Author City: PHILADELPHIA, PA USA