Thursday, December 27, 2007

Garrison Keillor's Writers Almanac: "What My Father Believed"

Garrison Keillor's reading of my poem "What My Father Believed" from my book Lightning and Ashes is now available at the Writers Almanac site:

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2007/12/24/#friday

This poem talks about my father's faith, how he learned about God in Poland as a child, and how his faith sustained him in the concentration camps in Nazi Germany.
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2 comments:

  1. Cyn Huddleston1:08 PM

    John,
    The last two lines are IT. So many things about an authentic Christian life seem so...well, Wrong...in some way. Like leaving a good fellow hanging or taking it on the other cheek. I struggle with that authenticity all the time. If that poem was indeed about your father, (and people assume my poetry is 100% autobiographical all the time, though not) then he seems like the kind of guy I would want to have hung around with.

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  2. John Guzlowski8:02 PM

    Hi, Cynthia, thanks for the note.

    Yes, the poem's about my dad, and I tried to get him down as closely as I could. He was a man of many strengths and many weaknesses. One of the things that kept him strong was his sense of brotherhood, his sense of shared humanity.

    He had suffered a lot in the camps and that stayed with him. It taught him to help people.

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