Echoes of Tattered Tongues

The son of two Nazi concentration camp prisoners, John Guzlowski was born in a Displaced Persons camp and immigrated to Chicago with his little sister and Polish mother and father shortly after WWII. This devastating, one-of-a-kind collection uses poems and short essays to reveal unspeakable moments from his parents' wartime experiences, and the less-than-open arms America mostly extended to millions of families fleeing the ruins of Europe. -- Matt Sutherland, "Devastating, one-of-a-kind collection." Foreword Reviews, Spring 2016; https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/echoes-of-tattered-tongues/ Guzlowski (Lightning and Ashes), a Polish-American writer born in a German refugee camp after WWII, recounts the horrible atrocities enacted upon his parents during the war in these straightforward, gut-wrenching narrative lyric poems. These snapshots of Nazi German rule illustrate that hardship didn't end with German surrender; the aftershocks radiated through successive generations. Guzlowski's simple language highlights the violence without offering any comment or consolation...each word means more in the sparse, unadorned language Guzlowski employs. Poems of this nature are not meant to alleviate the pain, but to help keep a record of it; to serve as a reminder that silence is not a crime, but forgetting is. -- "Gut-wrenching narrative lyric poems." Publishers Weekly, April 4, 2016; http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-60772-021-8 Like most immigrant kids, John Guzlowski never wanted to write about his Polish parents and the world they left when they came to America... Unlike most stories of this kind, however, Guzlowski's is told mostly in poems, which forces the author to wield formal control over a material that's painful and distressing. Luckily for us, in Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded (Aquila Polonica, 2016), Guzlowski writes taut poemshe cares about the narrative as much as the voice or the image...These beautifully realized lines not only showcase Guzlowski's poetic sensibility but also keep the poem from slipping into sentimentality...Guzlowski aims to write not only about his parents' lives but also about the lives of all those forgotten, voiceless refugees, DPs, and survivors that the last century produced, no matter where they came from." In doing so, he appeals to our shared desire to understand how the present continues to be shaped by the past. -- "Taut...beautifully realized." World Literature Today, April 13, 2016; http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/book-reviews/channeling-other-review-echoes-tattered-tongues-john-guzlowski Powerful...Deserves attention and high regard. To read these poems is to lift the lid on history and risk a step inside. One not only suffers the furnace but also endures, like the poet himself, the human will to counter history's inferno with an awful fire all its own. The poet's spare voice sings as austerely as his parents' trunk cobbled of Buchenwald wallboards. These poems do not flinch even as they take and give a punch: each note the pitch of absence given body, each silence a terrible waiting answered by singed arrival." - See more at: http://www.polandww2.com/echoes-of-tattered-tongues/echoes-of-tattered-tongues-praise#sthash.2I3ItxwY.dpuf -- Kevin Stein, "Powerful...Deserves attention and high praise." Poet Laureate of Illinois "Deeply moving. John Guzlowski has written a powerful, lasting, and sometimes shocking book, one in which prose and poetry join hands to document a felt comprehension of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis in WWII. He tells the stories his parents would have told had they not been living them. Thus these pages honor his forebears and indeed all those who were in the camps. The stories will haunt you but we must read them or fail to grasp what humans can do to humans. Anyone who wishes to consider himself or herself knowledgeable about the world in which, for better or for worse, we live, will read this superb book." -- Kelly Cherry, "Deeply moving. A powerful, lasting, and sometimes shocking book. Superb." Poet Laureate of Virginia (2010-2012) Some books take a lifetime to write, yet they can be read in one sleepless night, filled with tears of compassion and a heaviness of heart. John Z. Guzlowski's book of poetic memoirs is exactly such a book: an unforgettable, painful personal history, distilling the horrors of his parents' experiences in German labor and concentration camps into transcendent artwork of lucid beauty... A poet, writer and retired professor (Eastern Illinois University), Guzlowski has enjoyed 40 years of a successful academic and literary career... Intensely personal, the book is, at the same time, universal. Here's the secret of Guzlowski's impeccable use of language to capture the raw suffering of millions through the personal lens: "the bread of sawdust and sorrow..." "the scream that ends in screaming." The book is an historical and literary revelation: when I first read it, I realized that I did not even remember how many millions of Polish slave laborers were feeding Germany and building up its infrastructure, the machinery of war. Bringing this experience home, through intense, starkly realistic descriptions of dire facts and brutal events, is one of the strengths of Guzlowski's volume. It should be considered on a par with the work by giants of Holocaust literature - memoirs by Primo Levi, or stories by Tadeusz Borowski... -- "Unforgettable. An historical and literary revelation." Cosmopolitan Review, Winter 2016, http://cosmopolitanreview.com/echoes-of-tattered-tongues/ "John Guzlowski's rugged poems rise like a land-bridge emerging from would-be oblivion to connect continents, generations, and a deeply felt personal present with the tragic, implacable history of the twentieth century." -- Stuart Dybek, "John Guzlowski's rugged poems rise like a land-bridge." award-winning MacArthur Fellow and poet, author of "Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories" "I could not praise it enoughmasterfully done. Reads almost like a novel." -- Professor Gregory F. Tague, "I could not praise it enoughmasterfully done. Reads almost like a novel." Editor of "Battle Runes: Writings on War and Common Boundary: Stories of Immigration" It's hard to read this book. Not because the prose is in any way turgid or the poetry difficult in that pretentious way that once was the fashion. It's hard to read this book because it is so honest. So clear. Like a crystal clear day you get in the cold sunlight of winter...it shines...like seeing into people's souls... This is a book to hold and to hug, to stroke softly. -- Martin Stepek, This is a book to hold and to hug, to stroke softly...it shines...like seeing into people's souls." award-winning poet, author of "For There Is Hope", Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1492819406?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1 "Exceptional...even astonished me...reveals an enormous ability for grasping reality." -- Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz, "Exceptional...even astonished me...reveals an enormous ability for grasping reality." on Guzlowski's poetry in "Language of Mules" "Remarkable blend of academic scrutiny with stark, uncompromising humanity. What I find fascinating is Guzlowski's ability to always say something new...balancing overarching social commentary with the smallest, heart-wrenching details." -- Michael Meyerhofer, "Remarkable blend of academic scrutiny with stark, uncompromising humanity. Atticus Review, on Guzlowski's earlier work. Atticus Review, September 3, 2013, http://atticusreview.org/featured-poet-john-guzlowski/ "Guzlowski should join the annals of the great recording angels, not just for his unsparing yet compassionate language but also because he makes clear what is so easy to forget: that no matter how many years pass, such events never do." -- Lola Haskins, Florida poet and author, Gainesville FL, "Guzlowski should join the annals of the great recording angels." author of "Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems", on Guzlowski's earlier work "Brings us face to face with what we cannot allow ourselves to forget." -- Jared Carter, "Brings us face to face with what we cannot allow ourselves to forget." author of "Work, for the Night Is Coming" and "After the Rain", on Guzlowski's earlier work