Interesting Times

Poems

Interesting Times explores efforts to confront the complexities of contemporary life at times with humor, as in Florida, at other times, as in Irene, with resolve, having sunk roots so deep hopes possible, and at all times, with the knowledge that were nature, too. Herbert A. Kenney said of his work that Mazzaro writes powerfully of passing time, the erosion of things and persons and emotions, and the growth of man that comes from suffering sensed and shared, and Richard Emil Braun that his voice, no less than his vision, withstands distortion, the timbre same and measure same in utterance and meditation and describes it as high and strong as a callers promenade home. Robert Peters writes that the voice insists on the traditional iambic pentameter line (the purely free-verse lyric being rare), on verse sentence structures that echo the elegance of Georgian and Victorian verse and on diction that provides conscious spots of beauty and elegiac adornments, and in The New York Times, Joseph Bennett called it dignified, elegant, meaningful, and manly. Reviewing Weathering the Changes, Daniela Gioseffi finds that Mazzaro is worth the reading if one wants to recapture what poetic craft can really do for the ear and the heart as well as the seasoned mind, and Robert Phillips that Mazzaro is an American poet who should be better known.