USHMM celebrates Captain Witold Pilecki and The Auschwitz Volunteer
Coming Fall 2024 Sikorski: No Simple Soldier—A Visual History of World War II's Unsung Allied Leader
2023 Aquila Polonica Article Prize WInner Announced
Aquila Polonica on national TV - interview on Lifetime television morning show The Balancing Act
Wall Street Journal Europe – Opinion by Aquila Polonica publisher Terry Tegnazian, “Polish Heroes: The history of the country's World War II resistance against Nazi Germany fell victim to Realpolitik.”
Publishers Weekly – “Aquila Polonica Finds Its Niche”
Warsaw Business Journal - Opinion by Aquila Polonica publisher Terry Tegnazian, "The Polish Connection."
Connect
TELL A FRIEND
MAILING LIST
Echoes of Tattered Tongues
Echoes of Tattered Tongues
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Over a writing career that spans more than 40 years, John Guzlowski has amassed a significant body of work in a wide range of genres: poetry, prose, literary criticism, reviews, fiction and nonfiction.
His poems and stories have appeared in such national journals as North American Review, Ontario Review, Rattle, Chattahoochee Review, Atlanta Review, Nimrod, Crab Orchard Review, Marge, Poetry East, Vocabula Review. He was the featured poet in the 2007 edition of Spoon River Poetry Review. Garrison Keillor read Guzlowski’s poem “What My Father Believed” on his program The Writers Almanac.
Critical essays by Guzlowski about contemporary American, Polish, and Jewish authors can be found in such journals as Modern Fiction Studies, Polish Review, Shofar, Polish American Studies, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, and Studies in Jewish American Literature.
His previously published books include Language of Mules (DP Press), Lightning and Ashes (Steel Toe Books), Third Winter of War: Buchenwald (Finishing Line Press), and Suitcase Charlie (White Stag/Ravenswood). Guzlowski’s work has also been included in anthologies such as Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust (Time Being Books), Chopin with Cherries (Moonrise Press), Common Boundary: Stories of Immigration (Editions Bibliotekos), and Longman Academic Reading Series 5 Student Book (Pearson Education ESL).
Guzlowski's book Echoes of Tattered Tongues won the Gold Award for Poetry at the 2017 Benjamin Franklin Awards, and the 2017 Montaigne Medal of the Eric Hoffer Awards as one of the most thought-provoking books of the year. It garnered excellent reviews, including from Publishers Weekly, World Literature Today, Harvard Review, Shelf Awareness, the current Poet Laureate of Illinois, and a past Poet Laureate of Virginia. Winner of the Illinois Arts Council's $7,500 Award for Poetry, Guzlowski has also been short-listed for the Bakeless Award and Eric Hoffer Award, and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and four Pushcart Prizes. He has been honored by the Georgia State Commission on the Holocaust for his work.
In reviewing Guzlowski’s book Language of Mules, Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz wrote, “Exceptional…even astonished me…reveals an enormous ability for grasping reality.”
Born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, Guzlowski came to America with his family as a Displaced Person in 1951. His parents had been Polish slave laborers in Nazi Germany during the war. Growing up in the tough immigrant neighborhoods around Humboldt Park in Chicago, he met hardware store clerks with Auschwitz tattoos on their wrists, Polish cavalry officers who still mourned for their dead horses, and women who had walked from Siberia to Iran to escape the Russians. In much of his work, Guzlowski remembers and honors the experiences and ultimate strength of these voiceless survivors.
Guzlowski received his B.A. in English Literature from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Purdue University. He is a Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Eastern Illinois University, and currently lives in Lynchburg, Virginia.
You can find Guzlowski on:
Facebook (public):
Personal FB page
Echoes of Tattered Tongues FB page
Twitter: @johnguzlowski
Blogs:
Echoes of Tattered Tongues blog
Writing the Holocaust blog
Goodreads:
Personal Goodreads page
Echoes of Tattered Tongues Goodreads page
Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded
by John Guzlowski
Innovative poetry and prose weave together to tell the story of war refugee immigrants in America.
Download the info sheet here!
Buy Now!
Shelf Awareness Book Trailer of the Day:
WINNER of the GOLD AWARD for POETRY
at the 2017 Benjamin Franklin Awards
WINNER of the 2017 MONTAIGNE MEDAL
for most thought-provoking books
"POWERFUL...Deserves attention and high regard."
— Kevin Stein, Poet Laureate of Illinois
"A SEARING MEMOIR."
— Shelf Awareness
"DEVASTATING, one-of-a-kind collection."
— Foreword Reviews
"GUT-WRENCHING narrative lyric poems."
— Publishers Weekly
"Taut...BEAUTIFULLY REALIZED."
— World Literature Today
In this major tour de force, John Guzlowski traces the arc of one of the millions of immigrant families of America, in this case, survivors of the maelstrom of World War II.
Raw, eloquent, nuanced, intimate—Guzlowski illuminates the many faces of war, the toll it takes on innocent civilians, and the ways in which the trauma echoes down through generations.
His narrative structure mirrors the fractured dislocation experienced by war refugees. Through a haunting collage of jagged fragments—poems, prose and prose poems, frozen moments of time, sometimes dreamlike and surreal, other times realistic and graphic—Guzlowski weaves a powerful story with impacts at levels both obvious and subtle. The result is a deeper, more visceral understanding than could have been achieved through descriptive narrative alone.
This is the story of Guzlowski’s family: his mother and father, survivors of the war, taken as slave laborers by the Germans; his sister and he, born soon after the war in Displaced Persons camps in Germany; the family’s first days in America, and later their neighbors in America, some dysfunctional and lost, some mean, some caring and kind; and the relationships between and among them all.
As Guzlowski unspools the story backwards through time, he seduces us into taking the journey with him. Along the way, the transformative power of the creative process becomes apparent. Guzlowski’s writing helps him uncouple from the trauma of the past, and at the same time provides a pathway for acceptance and reconciliation with his parents.
Ultimately, then, this is a story of healing.
Because America is a land of immigrants with myriad and varied pasts, Guzlowski’s story may reflect pieces of your own family’s history, though details will of course differ. Something similar may also be the hidden story of one of your friends, or a colleague at work, or the sales clerk or waiter who serves you one day…or even, like Guzlowski, your professor of English literature.
"Exceptional...astonished me. Reveals an enormous ability for grasping reality."
— Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz
on Guzlowski's poetry in Language of Mules
DETAILS:
Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded
by John Guzlowski
Foreword by Charles Adès Fishman
Pub Date: March 2016
ISBN: 978-1-60772-021-8
Format & Retail Price: Hardcover, $21.95
Size: 6" x 9"
Page Count: 200 pages
Click here to BUY the book now! Also available in AUDIOBOOK!
Echoes of Tattered Tongues
Book Trailer
Echoes of Tattered Tongues
Audiobook
Echoes of Tattered Tongues is now available in AUDIOBOOK!
Listen to sample poems from this award-winning book below. If you would like to read each poem while listening to the audio, click the poem's title—this will take you to a copy of the poem accompanied by playable audio:
"Refugees" (00:59) -
"German Soldiers Stealing from the Dead" (00:38) -
"Grief" (00:59) -
"Danusia" (1:53) -
"A Garden in the Desert" (00:53) -
Read the review by AudioBook Reviewer!
Download the Audiobook from:
Total 3 hours and 5 minutes; $14.95.
Narrated by actor Jon Brandi.
Producers: Terry Tegnazian and Tom Bajoras.
Recorded and edited by Tom Bajoras.
Dialect Coach: Marek Zebrowski.
An Aquila Polonica Publishing Production.
Echoes of Tattered Tongues
Buy the Book
BUY this award-winning book NOW from your favorite online retailers OR at your local bookstore (if they don't have it in stock, they can order it for you). It's currently available in hardcover, trade paperback, ebook and audiobook. (For retailers and libraries: our titles are distributed through all major wholesalers and National Book Network—scroll all the way down this page.)
Here are a few online sources:
At an independent bookstore near you
THE AUDIOBOOK is now available for download from:
Total 3 hours and 5 minutes; $14.95. Narrated by actor Jon Brandi.
Listen to sample poems below. If you would like to read each poem while listening to the audio, click the poem's title—this will take you to a pdf of the poem that contains playable audio:
"Refugees" (00:59) -
"German Soldiers Stealing from the Dead" (00:38) -
"Grief" (00:59) -
"Danusia" (1:53) -
"A Garden in the Desert" (00:53) -
FOR RETAILERS & LIBRARIES:
Aquila Polonica titles are distributed through all major wholesalers and by National Book Network.
Phone (toll free): 1-800-462-6420
FAX (toll free): 1-800-338-4550
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Website: www.nbnbooks.com
For international orders, go to: http://distribution.nbni.co.uk/how-to-buy-from-us/
BOOKS & DVDs
Download Current Catalogue
Click on the covers below for more info on each book
Fighting Auschwitz: The Resistance Movement in the Concentration Camp
by Józef Garliński
Download Fighting Auschwitz Info Sheet
