Dream Catchers

About the Book

In a style that Joseph Bennett in the New York Times called “dignified, elegant, meaningful, and manly,” Dream Catchers continues the celebration of daily living that is the concern of Jerome Mazzaro’s poetry. His poems, however, are now centered more in New York City where he has lived since 2001 and from which he travels occasionally. Part of the life they explore are the inhabitants’ dreams, pleasures, and expectations, reflected in a constant and challenging reinvention, and, as poems like “For the Fallen FDNY,” “Memorials,” and “Shadow Towers: Five Years Later” testify, this reinvention has continued in the face and aftermath of 9/11. Even today, despite disappointment, the volume’s title poem indicates, its inhabitants will send “fiery rockets into the air.” The fifty-nine poems that comprise the volume contain mature love songs, elegies for the poets Robert Creeley and John Logan, and wry looks at the human condition, as well as poems of failed communication resulting from changes that, at times, make individuals “small worlds locked in a universe.” Reviewing Mazzaro’s last collection, Robert Phillips remarked that “Mazzaro is an American poet who should be better known than he is.”

About the Author

Jerome Mazzaro is an accomplished poet and critic. He was born in Detroit, Michigan and received degrees from the State University of Iowa (M.A. in Creative Writing) and Wayne State University (A.B. and Ph.D.) He has taught at the University of Detroit, the State University of New York, Bennington College, and San Diego State College. In 1964, he was awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and he has served as Editor and Contributing Editor for a number of journals. His books include a verse translation of Juvenal’s Satires, critical studies on Robert Lowell, the Renaissance English Lyric, William Carlos Williams, Luigi Pirandello, and Dante as well as four volumes of poetry. In 1996, he retired from the State University of New York at Buffalo and currently lives in Manhattan.