Peter Joseph Gloviczki’s poems explore the timeless realities of the human condition. The language here is as witty as it is playful, all the while embracing everyday simplicity. These are poems that aim to say what is meant and to be bold in the practice of expression. Gloviczki works to waste not a word. Every sentence drives each poem forward. Never one to shy away from plain language, Gloviczki’s poems reveal direct routes are the best way forward. Equally at ease when exploring love and loss, What’s left to the imagination is everything strives to make sense of change as the only constant in our evolving world.
“These are clean poems in a world of labored ones. Whereas too many poets pile on the special effects, Peter Gloviczki offers us snapshots that, like Zen riddles, tell us that what we see is less important than the fact that we look in the first place. One of my favorites is ‘For Thomas Edison,’ which says if we throw away everything we own, we’ll have more light in our lives as well as a chance at reinvention.”
David Kirby
Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English, Florida State University
On the Radio
What's left to the imagination is everything, so I like to turn it up in the car. I like to sing along with no one: imagine myself where the streets have foreign names.
Maybe a boy and his girl on their motorbike, winding through cobblestone streets to buy ice cream or coffee or bread—food then the pair will ride home.
* * *
Triolet for How We Spent Winter
We broke our breath on the window.
We left everything our lungs let out
released, now, steam watching snow.
We broke our breath on the window:
exhaled evidence of what lovers sow.
We wore skin for every blessed bout.
We broke our breath on the window.
We left everything our lungs let out.
* * *
What We Built
Yesterday wasn’t a memory.
We made it up
crossing three counties
looking for a home
worth leaving.
Finding no hot tubs, no
pools or backyards, we
scouted
across state lines—
North Dakota melting:
lost to ice, awash
in sleet.
We landed on Maui
hallowed ground without snow.
We built a sandcastle,
watched as the water
washed it away
then knelt again
to our new god.
The above poems are Copyright © Peter J. Gloviczki
