John Popielaski

John Popielaski (born 1968 in Port Jefferson, New York) is a contemporary poet from East Hampton, Connecticut. To date, he has published two compilations, "Contemporary Martyrdom" and "A Brief Euereka for the Alchemists of Peace". He also teaches English at Xavier High School in Middletown, Connecticut, where his students love hearing the prolific and uncanny stories of his life's journeys. Currently he is pimping and just being Beast

Biography

John Popielaski attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook and American University. His profile in the back of "Contemporary Martyrdom" refers to him as, "an itinerant teacher and seasonal laborer;" he in fact worked several years as a mover, a lobsterman, and assisting a tropical biologist before teaching English in Mississippi, New York City, and now at Xavier High School in Connecticut. Many of his poems have been published in literary journals, and he has been the recipient of a fellowship from the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Notable Quotations

* "Calm down."
* "Take it easy."
* "Stop."
* "Lou, turn around."
* "Settle down."
* "Quiet down."
* "Alright that's a jug."
* "You riding your horse?"
* "No, she's a gorgon."
* "Every time I blow my nose, I get snot in my moustache."
* "I wish society permitted me to kick you in the face right now."
* "keep your personal fantasies out of this."
* "Joe move your seat."
* "Stop guessing and look in the book."
* "It isn't "like" a folktale. It "is" a folktale, damn you."

Publications

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0913559733 "Contemporary Martyrdom"] was released in May 2002, published by Birch Brook Press of Delhi, NY. It contains thirty-one poems:

* Tea Bag as a Verb
* On a Member of the Cultural Elite
* Florence
* Nose Job
* Sanitizing Rome
* Predisposed
* Love Handles
* Spotting Mortality
* Contemporary Martyrdom
* Constructive Criticism
* Emigrating from Binarydom
* Attempting Self-Recovery
* The First Time
* Two Perspectives on Recovery
* Junkyard in the Sky
* On Whether Monks Had Other Dreams at First
* The Simple Things in Life
* The Trouble with Containers
* Culture and the Dow
* Letter to Jim Mullany (Re: Downsizing)
* Landscaper
* Full Circle
* A Plea for Symbiosis
* Workaday World
* Majestic Roach
* Greener
* The Advent of the Mum Evangelist
* Under the Influence
* Rocketship Park
* Condom
* On the Wagon

[http://www.antrimhousebooks.com/popielaski.html "A Brief Eureka for the Alchemists of Peace"] followed in 2005 from [http://www.antrimhousebooks.com/index.html Antrim House Books] . It contains forty-five poems, divided into four section:

* Reassessing the Interior
** Sky Burial
** Before Luther
** Galileo's Middle Finger
** Novice
** The Invisible World
** Sanitized
** Reassessing the Interior
** Hubris
** All the Tea in China
* Detachment
** Epilogue
** The Office of the Seclusion of a Leper
** Appearances
** John Wayne
** Emerson on Thoreau
** Evaporation
** Pity Isn't Well Communicated in the Funniest Cartoons
** Polish Jokes
** On Passing by an Accident One Evening after Work
** Detachment
* A Question of Accountability
** Domestic Dispute
** On the Power of Malapropisms
** Evening Drive
** Sir Amherst in Anticipation, 1763
** Opossum
** Scene from a Documentary
** Market Forces
** The Endurance
** A Question of Accountability
** Holy Cow
** Phineas Gage
** The Beheading of Languille
** On Someone Murdered Two Towns Over
** The Worst Winds
* Mercy
** The Scops
** On Reading Anonymous
** To One in My Old Job
** Helen Keller Challenged Me
** Mercy
** Interrelations
** The Anxiety of Influence
** More Light
** In the Season of the Open Windows
** Elder Bunker, Elder Howe
** Three-Bedroom Cape, with Spirit

"Brief Eureka" Cover Art

The cover of "A Brief Eureka for the Alchemists of Peace" displays a photograph by Shaun Walker of activist Julia Butterfly Hill during her two years living in a Redwood tree to prevent it from being destroyed.

Bibliography

* Popielaski, John (2002). "Contemporary Martyrdom". Dehli, NY: Birch Book Press.
* Popielaski, John (2005). "A Brief Eureka for the Alchemists of Peace". Simsbury, CT: Antrim House.