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The following poems from Peter Mladinic’s book Voices from the Past reveal what a master storyteller Peter is. Critics describe his empathy and compassion, two characteristics that open the heart and ears. Peter is a good listener and keen observer of life with the ability to translate the human condition into poetry.

Richard Pryor

I sat way up in the balcony.
In the spotlight on stage,
a slim twenty something:
confident in his hands,
his eyes roving the orchestra,
the tiered balcony,
Richard Pryor cracking jokes rapid fire:
mimicry, insane laughter
rising like a wave, carrying us,
he was there, the one, the me-ness
of pay attention, effortless,
vivid. The short Afro, thin tie,
hands going to the tie knot. Then,
spin the time dial ahead
forty years: his darkness,
his wheelchair, head tilted
sideways, eyes staring
where no one else was looking,
a wheelchair’s blanket over
his legs. Are you cold?

Unsolved Mystery

A kid lived in Baltimore, the early 1990s.
His mother fatally overdosed on heroin,
his father gave him to the kid’s aunt,
who lost him. His name was Roland.
The aunt neglected him. You might say,
Let’s see it. All I can say, she was absent.
It’s hard to see him opening a fridge
and finding it empty, hard to say what
he did for food, or to see him waking up
on a mattress on the floor, or dressing,
or out with friends. He had no one.
He likely got strangled by a predator.
You’d like to think he’s alive but likely
he died before age 12. He had nothing.
Have you ever looked in the eyes of
Someone who has nothing? I haven’t.
The predator’s hands on Roland’s throat
to keep him from telling, the fear in
Roland’s eyes, then his blank eyes —
I only know he disappeared.
© Peter Mladinic

Peter Mladinic’s Description of Voices from the Past
(found on Better Than Starbucks and Amazon)

Voices from the Past is about memory. It’s about beauty, loss, destruction, despair, and joy. It’s about things both local and universal, the individual and the community. Its words represent people, places, things of yesterday and today. It’s a book about reflecting on the past to live well in the present.

How something is said is equally as important as what is said. Poems in Voices from the Past are spoken in the poet’s voice and in the voices of others, characters who muddle through perplexities, who inhabit a world in which there are no easy answers.

It’s a book about the self alone and with others, and universal verities such as cowardice, courage, envy, pride, sacrifice, hope, fear, unconditional and imperfect love. It’s about suffering and joy, about what it means to remember and what it means to be human. The illogical coexists with the logical, the mundane with the profound. The extraordinary is found in the ordinary. It’s about looking back and going forward.

The poems aim to show the dignity of all people, and of all living things.

Being a book about lives at once ordinary and uncommon, special in varied ways, the poems reflect any one person’s moods at particular times, and any one person’s life’s journey at particular times. Religion, art, music, politics, gender, race and nature are some of the concerns in these poems. Language itself is a concern, language as a medium of communication from one individual to another, and from one individual to a group or a community. The poems are about tangible things and human situations, about relationships and about how individuals see themselves. The abiding notion is we live in a world with others who are both near and far.

What one does, or does not do impacts others. Words have consequences and words redeem.

Poetry itself has the power of redemption. Some years ago a poet said that poetry brought him back to life. The poems in this book have that high aim, to give hope, to enhance the quality of a person’s life, to find out of despair joy, out of misery happiness, out of restlessness solace.

Voices from the Past is available on Better than Starbucks and on Amazon in paperback format. Check out the book description and critical praise for the book by following this link.

Author Biography

Peter Mladinic was born and raised in New Jersey. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1973 and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas in 1985. Professor emeritus at New Mexico Junior College, where he was a member of the English faculty for 30 years. During that time, he was a board member of the Lea County Museum and president of the Lea County Humane Society. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.