Firefly July: a Year of Very Short Poems

Paul Bryan Janeczko was born in Passaic, New Jersey on July 27, 1945. He received a bachelor's degree in English from St. Francis College in 1967 and a master's degree in English from John Carroll University in 1970. While teaching public high school, he created his own poetry anthology to use in his classes. He retired from teaching in 1990 after 22 years.

He became a poet and anthologist best known for his poetry anthologies for children. From the 1980s through the early 2000s, he was the compiler for several anthologies including Pocket Poems: Selected for a Journey, I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You: A Book of Her Poems and His Poems Collected in Pairs, and A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms. He wrote several poetry collections including The Crystal Image, Requiem, Worlds Afire, and The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-to Poems. His novel, Bridges to Cross, was published 1986. He died on February 19, 2019 at the age of 73.

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