The Angelic Salutation

John Lars Zwerenz (1969 - )

John Lars Zwerenz (1969 - ) is an American impressionistic poet who is considered one of the most important new literary figures in the world , both worldwide and in The U.S. ( according to Amazon)f. [1][2] Zwerenz's highly unique writing style of strict, rhyming metered verse, heavily themed with mystical subject matter has influenced a whole generation of contemporary poets according to Various Online Poetry Sites. {2B}[3] He is considered the forerunner of the 21st Century romantic renewal movement in the realm of contemporary verse. Early Life: Zwerenz was born to an aristocratic Anglo Saxon family on January 5, 1969, and was baptized into The Roman Catholic Faith one month later at Sacred Heart Parish in Queens, New York. His father, Jack Zwerenz, a sales representative for Benjamin Moore Paints, where he advanced to head management, became intensely involved as a civil activist in New York City affairs and as a political lobbyist for high office conservative incumbents was 10 years his wife's senior. Zwerenz's mother, born in Brooklyn in 1942 was raised as a Lutheran. Zwerenz was educated in Queens, New York where he excelled in English Letters at Queens College, graduating with honors in 1992. Zwerenz wrote poetry prolifically since childhood, mostly influenced by The French Symbolists of the 19th Century. The few surviving papers Zwerenz wrote in college in literary classes covered in depth the poetry and poetics of such French symbolic figures such as Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire, as well as some American romantics such as Edgar Allan Poe. In addition to these writers, Zwerenz himself in his preface to his "Eternal Verse"(2013) mentions Dante, Milton and Keats as poets he attempts to "surpass" in poetic merit. In the same preface Zwerenz quotes Saint John Chrysostom's recommendations for an eternal romantic union between a man and woman in heaven, sighting a passage from the Magisterium of The Roman Catholic Church. Although Zwerenz now publicly professes his accordance with Church teachings, as a youth he was an erratic and eccentric student and his arbitrary attendance habits reflected his bohemian lifestyle. It was in college that Zwerenz was first diagnosed with a severe case of bipolar disorder which would profoundly affect his intense personality as well as his writing in both positive and negative ways. Zwerenz wrote a biologically oriented essay on the topic of the pathology and shared the paper with Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who is considered an expert on the disease and precipitated a friendship between the two. Already temperamental, the disease threw Zwerenz's moods into more harsh extremes. After graduating from college, Zwerenz made a brief and unsuccessful attempt at conservative employment writing for the Economist Magazine. Zwerenz soon after quit his tenuous employment as well as graduate school in order to travel and immerse himself in literature. He then embarked on a ten year excursion, living the life of a vagabond and often relying on strangers for survival. His problems with alcohol, present since his youth, increased during this time, leading to several hospitalizations for exhaustion. Published Career "My lady lives up high, In a castle by the sea. She is well acquainted with majesty, And she dreams of fair love with a longing sigh. There is a river that does run Through her rose garden below Her balcony and her window, At one with the summer sun. She likes to pine in long, white dresses, And in soporific trances She ascends to lofty reveries, As symphonies Gleam like ethereal dances In her mind and in her tresses, Of azure blues and ebonies." - My Lady (A Sonnet from Eternal Verse, 2013) Zwerenz is one of today's major poets who has returned and revived contemporary verse to its pre-romantic and romantic origins. Consequently, some of his creative, poetic atmospheres are flavored with various elements of the middle ages. In 2012 Zwerenz was hired by Emage Magazine International, a new and trendy arts publication, to be the magazine's official poetry writer. [4] What many consider to be Zwerenz's best book of poems, Eternal Verse, makes a conscious attempt to explore the possibilities of a paradisal afterlife. Criticism While a number of prominent literary critics have lauded Zwerenz's verse as among the best composed since the death of Robert Frost in 1963, other syndicated critics have derided Zwerenz's poetry as transparently outdated and excessively anachronistic in both style and expression. Nonetheless, Zwerenz's third to last book of poems, Elysian Meadows (2017) was a # 1 best seller on Amazon for all new poetry anthologies where it remained for a month, according to Amazon. [1B] ATLA Publishing House, a London based press, which published Zwerenz's last four books released a moderately selling anthology, The Gilded Sun & Other Verse in the fall o more…

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