Biography

A blue-toned portrait of Joe Wrobel in glasses

Joe Wrobel was born in Trenton, NJ in 1937, the oldest son of Polish immigrants. He remembers his childhood in the near-poverty ghettos of uneducated Catholic factory workers as a golden age. He was the second person in his family to graduate from grade school and high school, and the first to graduate from college. He is grateful to his father for sharing his love of reading, drawing, music and taking risks to find delight, and to his mother for her tough humor.

He has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in English Literature and doctoral studies in Mass Communication, and taught writing and literature before becoming a training and development consultant for government agencies, international unions, and private corporations, working out of Washington, DC. He retired in 1990 as vice president of the ECR Associates consulting group.

While in Washington he often participated in public reading events such as annual marathon readings of James Joyce’s Ulysses and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and was a radio reader for the blind on The Washington Ear program. Since his retirement to South Carolina he has been busy as an actor in upstate theaters, where he has often portrayed Shakespearean authority figures such as kings, dukes, judges, royal counselors, bishops and priests.

Most of his writing of poetry was done between 1980 and 2000, while a participant in the human development programs of Dr. Jean Houston, especially the Mystery School series. He experimented with many poetic forms, rhymed and unrhymed, from sonnets and villanelles to limericks and rap lyrics. The constant theme is the human drive for self-transcendence, the “pea under the mattress.” Often his poems were attempts to capture experiences in the program by relating them to mythic themes, often in response to the inspiration of other participants. Over 50 participants received such tributes, and many are included in this collection. Dr. Houston referred to the effort as “a Spoon River Anthology for the living,” celebrating the human yearning for greater growth and depth.

His more recent poems, such as “Drummers and Dancers,” “All River,” “Birthday Sixty-Eight,” “Elementals” and “Praise Song,” show how the energetic demands of his earlier work is turning into gratitude for slower, more reflective graces.