Stelzig, E: ASSORTED SELFSCRIPTINGS 1964-1

Assorted Selfscriptings 1964-1985 is a selection of Eugene Stelzig’s poetry from five manuscript volumes. The poems are expressions of moods and states of mind of a changing self—or more accurately, selves. They are traces or scraps, remnants or remainders and reminders of them. Through these often confessional and autobiographical verses, Stelzig speaks to the states of mind and moods all pass through in life’s perennial journey. The issues these poems touch on are at once intimately personal as well as engaged with the politics of daily life and the larger world we all inhabit. In this delight-studded collection, we have the first twenty years of a lifelong love affair with poetry. In addition to considerable erudition, the author brings keen observational powers directed at both the external and internal worlds, as well as a refreshingly self-deprecating wit. Whether recalling his childhood in Post-War Austria, describing an encounter with a “dowsing witch,” imagining hunting elephants in Western New York, or writing tender lyrics to his beloved Elsje, Eugene Stelzig brings us “September Gifts.” He urges us to “let these assorted selfscriptings / disseminate beyond the margins / become and then unbecome you / let them multiply beyond / our simple mees and wees/ disperse us into other spaces and places.” -John Roche, Associate Professor of English, Rochester Institute of Technology