Kyle Carrozza

Kyle Carrozza, Editor in Spring of 2010

Year/Major: Senior, English – Creative writing emphasis
Representing: Coatesville, Pennsylvania
…but he was born in:  Pusan, South Korea
Things I like: Poetry!  Aesthetics, post-post-postmodernism (assuming, of course, that the Digital Age is/was post-postmodernism), 2Pac, Cream, Buddy Guy, Asian American with no hyphen, talking muffin jokes, Sri Racha Sauce, scrapple, Italy, Italians, and Italian-Americans with a hyphen, Philadelphia-based sports teams as well as Arsenal FC, Tony Bourdain, TS Eliot, Robert Hass, Emily Dickinson, and Patrick Feehan.
Things I dislike: Water chesnuts, text messaging, printers, Dave Matthews.
Fun Fact: I got exactly the same scores on the math and verbal sections of the SAT.
Never Have I Ever: hit an animal with my car.
I like to eat: scrapple and the other bits of the animal people don’t like.  Kimchi and Romano cheese, as well–not together, though.
I like to drink: Guinness, Chianti wine, scotch.
Favorite color: Purple.
Awards/Publications: Anthology of Young Poets (circa 1997), Keystone Award for editorials from the Pennsylvania Student Press Association (circa 2001), 2nd place – Matthew Mihelcic Poetry Award 2009, 2nd place – Matthew Mihelcic Poetry Award 2010.
Writing Experience: Editorial editor (is that a bit redundant?) for the Raider Review, Coatesville Area Senior High school’s newspaper; editor-in-chief for a school newspaper and then a literary magazine, neither of which got off the ground; Daily Jolt main editor; HR for Problem Child; main editor for Problem Child.
Favorite Poem: “The Hollow Men” – TS Eliot, “Meditation at Lagunitas” – Robert Hass
Favorite Short Story: “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” – Ernest Hemingway, “A Small, Good Thing” – Raymond Carver
Favorite Novel: Catch-22 – Joseph Heller, A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Sample O’ Kyle:

Winner of the Matthew Mihelcic Poetry Award 2009

Departure

For Lisa Yoder

Waiting in Market East Station,
I cannot see the sun—
cannot see the white
of here or the black
of somewhere else;
I can only see the gray

of in between.  Gray of the concrete
pillars and floor, gray
of my bags.  Luggage
is the saddest thing
in the world.
Memory is luggage.
Conversation
is memory.

When we’re apart,
the conversations
are reminiscence
of the times we spent
together, and when
we’re with each other,
they recount the time
we spent apart.  Elegy
or future elegy.  Whispers
of the dialectical zigzag
that our lives follow,

the one that never turns
back onto itself.  Each line
is a journey.  Each point
is a phase, a thesis
or antithesis, a somewhere
else that makes us long
for somewhere else.

As the front of the train
speeds past my eyes,
I gaze down the track—
a white glow through
a black tunnel.  Light
is the ancestor of time,
an intimation of sunrise, sunset,
or maybe just the sundial.
Pulling out of the station,
signs blur past, reminding me:

Never run for trains. Never run
for trains. Never run