At School and Other Poems

Dramatic and lyrical poetry of the classroom experience in a high school of largely minority students. The "minority" aspect is sometimes and in some ways incidental and sometimes not so. After all, any way you cut it, it's still high school, with all the humanity and absurdity that the term implies. Part two of the collection, Moments of Balance, explores the tensions between inner and outer conflicts, reacting to a world at perpetual war with itself and sometimes striking zen notes particularly in appreciations of nature and music.

Ron Gaskill's poetry has been published in many small magazines, and he is editor and web designer of Jerseyworks.com, an arts journal in its tenth year and with readers in over 40 countries. He is author of two novels, The Wisdom of Christopher Murphy and The Unmade Man. Mr. Gaskill has taught school at every grade from middle school through university; for the past nine years he has taught at Pleasantville High School in New Jersey.