1 The morning sun accentuates the prayer plant’s veins. It’s already hot when I think of getting out of bed. Down the hall the children’s
more loveAuthor: John Stanizzi
John L. Stanizzi is the author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Chants, Sundowning, POND
Besides Discretionary Love, Johnnie’s poems can be found in Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Tar River Review, PoetLore, Paterson Literary Review, and many others. His nonfiction has been published in Literature and Belief, Stone Coast Review, Ovunque Siamo, and others. His poems have appeared widely in Italy with profound gratitude to his translator, and dear friend, Angela D’ambra.
Johnnie has read at venues all over New England, including the Mystic Arts Café, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Hartford Stage, the Riverwood Poetry Series, and many others. He also coordinated the Fresh Voices Poetry Competition for Young Poets at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, Connecticut for 10 years, and spent a decade with Poetry Out Loud as a “Teaching Artist.”
A former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, Johnnie was the New England Poet of the Year, Poet-in-Residence at Manchester Community College and in Middletown Connecticut. He was First Prize winner in Ekphrastic Poetry Review’s Ekp
John taught literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, Connecticut, for 26 years, high school English and theater at Bacon Academy in Colchester, CT. for 24 years, Johnnie lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry, CT. 
