About the Author:
A native of Oswego, New York, Stephen Murabito is an associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. He was a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in poetry in 1992. His poems and stories have appeared widely in such periodicals as Beloit Poetry Journal, Mississippi Review, 5AM, Poet Lore; North American Review,
Brooklyn Review, Caketrain, and Antietam Review. He is the author of the poetry chapbook A Little Dinner Music (Parallel Press, 2004) and the book-length poem The
Oswego Fugues (Star Cloud Press, 2005); he is also the author and editor of the composition reader Connections, Contexts, and Possibilities (Prentice Hall, 2001) He lives in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania, with his wife, April, and their four children-Angelina, Estella, Antonia, and Sebastian.
Editorial Reviews:
"The Oswego Fugues is a cogent attempt by one of the strongest of younger contemporary American poets to pursue nothing less than a paradigm shift beyond postmodernity, beyond the poststructural, taking into account the metaphysical and philosophical paradigms which came before, dramatizing the individual and collective human quest for vision, voice, verity."
—Vince Gotera, Editor of the North American Review, Postlude, page xxix
"The lives we live are polyphonic, Stephen Murabito argues eloquently in The Oswego Fugues. He composes a vivid and stirring music of place sung by voices that perform in counterpoint until a moment of harmonic confluence is reached. This startlingly ambitious novel in verse, devoted to the principle that 'words / can give birth to a soul,' proves that Stephen Murabito is a talent the world must watch-and hear."
—David Citino, Poet Laureate of Ohio State University
"Place, folk, memory: all speak of this tender, passionate weaving of voices, the living and the dead. In compelling imagery and language, Murabito has brilliantly caught the ways the voices of the past continue to shape us with their "inaccurate stories" as we return to them over and over in our journey from 'sound to light.' Reading these fugues is to receive a grace, to be part of a celebration of longing and love."
—Jo McDougall, Author of Dirt and Satisfied with Havoc, Autumn House Press