Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome our final featured artist, Pittsburgh-based poet John Zedolik with three poems exploring the permanence and mutability of “Space.” “Held Over” examines the view from the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Anxur on the Appian Way near Terracina on the Tyrrhenian coast south of Rome, a view that does not only look down over the coast, sea and town, but back in time to its Roman history. John leads us to ponder “…the vacant/ space in which imagination may raise/ architectural orders, marble walls, and shelter roof…” There is a timelessness to ancient spaces, their sturdiness defining them as places that will continue to endure. Speaking of endurance, “Capable Span” contemplates a spider who has taken up a perilous residency in a Dixie Cup. Time passes and she “still holds tightrope center within the circle/ that, dry, twangs a silent Angstrom in the room’s/ almost-not-there current…”, a metaphor for the tenacious fragility of life. “Squamous Serenity” completes the trilogy, investigating the asphalt surface of a street while stopped at a red light, waiting for the moment “when the cool green changes the scene/ and the gray skin will be sheathed/ with quicksilver that reflects the light…”. John’s spare and subtle rhythms and gentle alliterative music are mesmerizing and pair well with his willingness to explore the abstract and ambiguous.
Experience John’s delicate poetry in Synkroniciti’s November 30th issue, “Space,” Vol. 5, No. 4, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
John Zedolik is an adjunct English professor at Chatham University and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He has published poems in such journals as Abbey, The Bangalore Review (IND), Commonweal, FreeXpresSion (AUS), Orbis (UK), Paperplates (CAN), Poem, Poetry Salzburg Review (AUT), Third Wednesday, Transom, and in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
In 2019, he published his first full-length collection, entitled Salient Points and Sharp Angles (WordTech Editions), which is available through Amazon, and in 2021, published another collection, When the Spirit Moves Me (Wipf & Stock), which consists of spiritually-themed poems and is also available through Amazon. He recently published his third collection, Mother Mourning (Wipf & Stock), again, available on Amazon. His iPhone is his primary poetry notebook, and he hopes his use of technology to craft this ancient art remains fruitful.