Published by The Puddin’head Press
Perfect Bound, 57 pages
5.5 x 8.5 inches, 2007
ISBN# 978-0-9724339-5-2
$12.00
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(This book is no longer available)
Praise for BrotherKeeper
Unprotected in their candor, unsentimental even in their embrace of childhood memories, the poems in BrotherKeeper shine with a reverence for the holiness of things that is completely in the spirit of Saint Francis. Not since Edwin O’Connor’s The Edge of Sadness have the joys and sacrifices of priesthood been so frankly and affectionately de-lineated. Larry Janowski’s book is a radiant collection, full of beauty, wisdom, and plenitude. – Ron Hansen, Novelist, Author of Atticus & A Stay Against Confusion
Larry Janowski writes from the heart, his poetry filled with the raw, pulsing power of his city, Chicago. In his title poem, BrotherKeeper, he writes of Eric Morse’s death: Chicago boys I never knew, who will not let go. It’s like that. That line has stayed with me. Janowski’s poetry does that. It penetrates your soul. – Alex Kotlowitz, Journalist, Author of There Are No Children Here and Never a City So Real
Larry Janowski has a gritty Chicago eye and a strong religious sensibility. He is a brave, crafty, and unwavering truth teller. He has written a deeply compassionate and mature first book that takes “Brother” and “Keeper” and joins them into one word, “BrotherKeeper,” a sign of our humanity, a whole, something holy. – Edward Hirsch, Poet, Author of Lay Back the Darkness
About The Author
Larry Janowski is a native Chicagoan, son of a used car dealer, a teacher, short story writer, poet, and real-life Friar Lawrence. He began his professional writing career as a reporter and editor with the Associated Press. A thorough Midwesterner, Larry grew up on the South Side of Chicago, went away to prep school in Wisconsin, got his BA back in Chicago at the University of Illinois, went to grad school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and seminary at Aquinas Institute of Theology in Dubuque, Iowa. Only his MFA is from out east: Vermont College. He joined the Franciscans in 1968, and was ordained in 1973.
He has won prizes in fiction (The Critic, Praying Magazine) and poetry at Literal Latté (“Gypsy” chosen by Cornelius Eady) and River Oak Review. He’s received development grants from the state of Wisconsin and city of Chicago, a residency at The Blue Mountain Center, and the J.R.H. Moorman Scholarship at St. Deiniol’s Residential Library in Great Britain. He has published two chapbooks: Chicago Cantata (2001) and Celibate Dazzled (2003). Janowski is an adjunct professor of English at Dominican University and at Wilbur Wright Community College where he was named the City Colleges of Chicago Distinguished Part Time Professor 2001-2002.
After living and working for almost 30 years in southeastern Wisconsin, Larry returned to Chicago in 1995, still madly in love with the city, its people and skyline, its music and noise, its art and style, its poetry.
Contents
BrotherKeeper
Brothers At Kitty Hawk
Blue Angels
Omen 1949
Sitting Up Nights
First Words
False Gods
Gypsy
Wet Cars
Man Making
Swallow
The Naming of Poles
Switchback
I Have Decided Not To Be
Get Your Streetwise!
Listen Carefully
Focus
Blues
Superman’s Funeral
Hope Chest
Found Lost
Protocol
On Showing Off Your Seventeen-Year-Old Son To Your Best Friend Who Has No Kids
Bad Boys
The Goodbye Kiss
Cole DeGenova Plays The Auditorium Theater
Chicago Cantata
March Praise For Global Warming
Face Down
Starting Block
Luminaria
Full Frontal
Transfusion
Life Studies
Blind Spot
The Adventures Of A Poem Lost On The Way To An Open Mic
Adam And Eve On Halsted Street
Present Perfect
White Wolf On Red Harley
What Celibacy Is
Incarnation
Doxology
Year Of Grace
Sample Poems
What Celibacy Is.
. . And there be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs
for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it,
let him receive it. (Matthew 19:12)
If this is what
it costs to hold
at heart a hollow
where no sparrow
lives (nothing alive
that needs light),
if this is what God
expects from Yes,
then it is too much
today, although
I pay it anyway.
Again. Some heroic
souls, though few,
I expect, accept
such terms without
complaint: those
who, full of You
to breaking, can
cut off every
other thing and
one, swallow
pain like wine,
smiling, drugged
on purest Spirit,
proof that You
exist, the mere dregs
of You enough
to feel or fill
another day. But
this hole in me
is not wholly
holy yet (if ever
it will be), is still
child-round and
lover-shaped
by someone as like
yet utterly unlike
me as I am like
and utterly other
than You, who
haunt and echo-
ache in that space
You claim
to hallow, but
which feels
merely hollow.
Will I now
meet You here?
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