This first, full-length collection of selected poems by New York poet Robert Prochaska is a fascinating tableau of works that transports the reader from the poet's boyhood to life in New York City. In the process, he provides spiritual links between his generation and past generations that few poets have traversed. Whether describing a dead man walking into a Horn and Hardart automat, or depicting his father boldly strutting down Broadway in the 1940s, Prochaska presents a treasure trove of characters, places, natural wonders, historical references, and epiphanies that burn an indelible mark on the reader's consciousness via the poet's prescient imagination.

But beyond Prochaska's power to shape mythic allusions to iconic events, his poems also offer a unique assessment of modern lives struggling with the dying past, creating riveting poetry out of visceral worlds that have long since disappeared. Many of these poems find their mark through sheer audacity, searching for new orchestrations of words that freely merge metaphor with motion, jolting the reader with images that awaken and disturb. Yet there are also disarming moments wherein the poet feels the true meaning of mortality and loss. If virtuosity of langauge and the power to transform is a hallmark of the best modern poetry, Epiphanies on the Promenade stands out among the best by an American poet.

The Absinthe Literary Review

Solid and successful American free verse. Prochaska alternates between spare orgiastic language to significant effect.

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Robert Prochaska's poetry has appeared in a variety of magazines and small press journals around the country, including The Louisville Review, The Passaic Review, Exquisite Corpse, The Laurel Review, Pipe Dream, Copula, Moody Street Irregulars, The Rhode Island Review, and Slipstream. In 1983, his poem "The City" was nominated by Slipstream editors for inclusion in the 1978-1983 publication Best of the U.S. Small Presses. He was also a featured poet in the Midwest anthology Fourfront, published by Bearstone Press in 1982. He has also been a frequent reader at New York City's club and café venues such as The Lite Café, Café Figaro, St. Mark's Annex, and Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey.