Dancing A Dizzy Holiness
by Larry Janowski
From the Introduction by Judith Valente:
The finest poems offer us a clarifying vision of what it means to be alive. Larry Janowski is a poet who offers us a window – freshly washed, sparkling in its clarity – in which to view and revel in our common humanity. He is at once the chronicler of the modest and the messy. A poet of the mean and the immeasurable, the unfathomable and the absolutely mundane, the sorrowful and the glorious.
From author and poet, Stuart Dybek:
That In Larry Janowski’s new collection, Dancing A Dizzy Holiness, a poem titled “Confessional Poem,” opens: “Ever wonder what it’s like on the priest’s side of the screen?” The witty title and the intimate voice that will answer this question typifies the complex, compassionate, and accessible down to earth beauty of this book. Down to earth—a stand-in phrase for wise. Down to earth in a way that is critical for Janowski’s credible reach toward the divine.
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© After Hours Press 2021, Elmwood Park, IL
Books from After Hours Press
Larry Janowski
when word and image run away
the selected poems of Mary Blinn
As is our tradition, After Hours magazine held a contributors’ reading in August of 2015,celebrating the release of Summer Issue #31. Quraysh Ali Lansana was the featured writer in that issue, and was also the featured reader at the event. This contributors’ reading, however, was a little different, because it also celebrated the poetry of After Hours regular contributor, featured writer (Issue #17), and friend Mary Blinn. Mary’s sudden death just two months before had greatly saddened the Chicago poetry community.
That afternoon, several After Hours readers began their sets with one or two of Mary’s poems. They brought to life Mary’s voice, her poetic music, and her words. Quraysh (a poet, writer, teacher, editor, and one of After Hours’ most distinguished featured writers) was immediately taken with Mary’s poetry and made the strong suggestion that a collection of her poetry needed to exist, to make sure such a wonderful Chicago poetic voice would continue to be heard and read.
Thus began the spark that drove the creation of When Word and Image Run Away. Through the careful cataloging of Mary’s files, her husband Robert Blinn made the bulk of her work available to the editors. The result, When Word and Image Run Away, is a selection of Mary Blinn’s finest poems, many of which were published in the pages of After Hours. Some of the illustrations, also by Mary, had appeared previously in After Hours magazine as well.
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Mary Blinn
The Professor's Quarters
Editors: Alice D'Alessio, Albert DeGenova, Jude Genereaux, Susan O'Leary
Nearly two years prior to his death in 2013, faithful friend and supporter of After Hours, Norbert Blei (teacher, fiction writer, poet, journalist and painter) invited some of his long-time students, all accomplished writers themselves, to contribute essays to a book he intended to write about his years as a teacher at The Clearing Folk School in Door County, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, time ran out before his vision was taken to fruition.
In the winter of 2013-14,the essays were gathered and compiled by Alice D’Alessio, Albert DeGenova, Jude Genereaux and Susan O’Leary and (in the spirit Norb foresaw) have now been published by After Hours Press as the book entitled The Professor’s Quarters. This collection stands as testimony to The Clearing Folk School, to Norbert Blei as Teacher, and to his writer-students.
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Norbert Blei in the Schoolhouse at The Clearing Folk School
