Paper Hats

Charles Zwinak's poems are inspired by history, art, and archeology. Born in Detroit, Michigan, he grew up in the Cass Corridor and near the Ford Rouge Plant, in a landscape surrounded by smokestacks, soot, smelting furnaces, ore boats on the Rouge River, train cars banging and rumbling in the night, and flares of light as steel was forged with a wake-up bang. He writes of agoraphobia, bridges and married love, often in the same poem. A long time-resident of Ann Arbor, Michigan, he has fallen in love with muddy roads, constellations over corn fields, wild turkeys, and ice jams on the Huron River.