Description
Poetry. "Stephen Kesseler's SCRATCH PEGASUS captures the poignancy of the human drama in poems as great as Ferlighetti's observing and honoring young lovers and aging poets recalling their youth. Amazing sonnets paint miniature portraits of iconic characters from his past while longer poems which themselves are music and art praise musicians and artists who have inspired him. 'Driving a Stake Through the Hearts of Beatnik Vampires' is one of the funniest poems I've ever read. Kesseler's poems offer vision after vision that empowers young poets and old poets to take flight."—Antler
"From the opening line, 'This dust has history,' to the exaltation of the title poem, SCRATCH PEGASUS has it all—lyricism, wit, intelligence, an open heart and a distinctive voice combined with the gift and ability to perform and deliver in a range of forms."—Robert Sward
Author Bio
Stephen Kessler is a poet, prose writer, translator and editor. Born in Los Angeles in 1947, he received his BA in languages and literature from Bard College and an MA in literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He published his first essays and criticism in the early 1970s, and his reviews, columns, articles, features and interviews have appeared steadily since then in dozens of magazines and newspapers, chiefly in Northern California. He was the founding editor and publisher of the international journal Alcatraz (1979-1985) and of the Santa Cruz newsweekly The Sun (1986-1989). He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets for his translations of Luis Cernuda, and is the editor and principal translator of The Sonnets by Jorge Luis Borges. His recent books include NEED I SAY MORE? (El León Literary Arts, 2015), WHERE WAS I? (Greenhouse Review Press, 2015), the poetry collection SCRATCH PEGASUS (Swan Scythe Press, 2013), translations of Vicente Aleixandre, the essay collection THE TOLSTOY OF THE ZULUS (El León Literary Arts, 2011), and the novel THE MENTAL TRAVELER (Greenhouse Review Press, 2010).From 1999 through 2014 he was the editor of the award-winning literary newspaper The Redwood Coast Review. He lives in Santa Cruz.
Author City: SANTA CRUZ, CA USA