November 2014               
Movies in the Age of Obama: The Era of Post-Racial and Neo-Racist Cinema

The historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States had a significant impact on both America and the world at large. By voting an African American into the highest office, those who elected Obama did not necessarily look past race, but rather didn’t let race prevent them for casting their ballots in his favor. In addition to reflecting the changing political climate, Obama’s presidency also spurred a cultural shift, notably in music, television, and film.

In Movies in the Age of Obama: The Era of Post-Racial and Neo-Racist Cinema, David Garrett Izzo presents a varied collection of essays that examine films produced since the 2008 election. The contributors to these essays comment on a number of films in which race and “otherness” are pivotal elements. In addition to discussing such films as Beasts of the Southern Wild, Black Dynamite, The Blind Side, The Butler, Django Unchained, The Help, and Invictus, this collection also includes essays that probe racial elements in The Great Gatsby, The Hunger Games, and The Mist. The volume concludes with several essays that examine the 2013 Academy Award winner for best picture, 12 Years a Slave.

Though Obama’s election may have been the main impetus for a “new wave of Black films,” this development is a bit more complicated. Moviemakers have long responded to the changing times, so it is inevitable that the Obama presidency would spark an increase in films that comment, either subtly or overtly, on the current cultural climate.  By looking at the issue these films address, Movies in the Age of Obama will be of value to film scholars, of course, but also to those interested in other disciplines, including history, politics, and cultural studies.

Permutations Among the Nightingales

From Shade seekers Press

With remarkable elan, David Garrett Izzo unfolds the secret origami of our minds and constitutions in his new book, Permutations among the Nightingales.  It’s a fierce collection of philosophical raps, tributes to culture heroes, and the naked autobiography of a man to whom life has given both great pain and great pleasure.  Reading Izzo’s poems, you wind up in unexpected places, for he is one of the great secrets of American literature.

Kevin Killian, November 2016.

(Kevin Killian is an American poet, author, editor, and playwright. My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, won the American Book Award for poetry in 2009.) 

The Man Who Thought he was Tarzan

A Fantasy From the Urban Jungle
Kindle or paperback from Amazon

Review: TARZAN RETURNS TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Teachers are special people and now we know why. In "The Man Who Thought He Was Tarzan," the protagonist, David, assumes the identity of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs' superhero. Like the man of the jungle, David espouses equality, a strong ethos, and personal honor that transcend class, race, and ethnicity. As a teen Tarzan, David finds purpose in his inner city neighborhood righting wrongs, fighting bullies and drug dealers before tragically struck down. But, not to worry, later as a popular 42 year old teacher in the same neighborhood, he returns to save the day. The novella, written for young adults, is fresh and vibrant. With strong characters and a solid plot line, readers of all ages will find the story entertaining and inspiring. After all, the world can be a tough place, whether it's Brooklyn or L.A... We all want Tarzan in our lives during those difficult times. RL Tecklenburg (author, Chasing Pancho Villa
1992: The story centers on high school students and a beloved teacher, Mr. Navarre, a skilled martial artist, who has a mysterious past that was taken away from him by amnesia following an explosion that was an attempted murder but did kill the woman he loved. His past haunts his present and the dangerous enemies he faced years before will return to threaten him and his students Within the forgotten memories was a time as a teenager who, after the traumatic sudden death of his mother believed he was someone else to forget his grief and protect his working class Queens, NY neighborhood from thugs. Now in his adult present three of his students are kidnapped by an old foe; he knows he must save them but this will require that his memory comes back so that he becomes once again The Man Who Thought He was Tarzan. This novella is a tribute to traditional heroes, loyal friendships, close knit neighborhoods, and the virtues of honor, justice and courage for those readers who are young and the still young-at-heart who love comic book characters that are all too human and not just invincible. Today they are represented on TV with the Flash and The Green Arrow and movies like Spiderman and the Batman Trilogy. The story thrives on the details of the writer's experiences as an English teacher and his realistic depiction of students is based on this.

Murder at the Shrine: an Ivory Tower Mystery

Mystery/thriller in and out of academia combining suspense and Wonder Boys wry humor.

Themes
Set in a major Philadelphia university, the mystery advances along five lines:
The first is the petty academic intrigue surrounding the bitter conflict of professors and an older PhD student that has published more than they have. The envy/jealousy quotient is high, nasty, vindictive and cruel. This line is told with both satirical and sarcastic humor but an unerring reality.
The second mystery is academic intellectual theft by two married professors that have gained their reputations by the husband stealing a theory of physics that is used by the military for a top-secret weapons project and the wife stealing a manuscript of poems. This duo has gone to extreme measures to attain the work and keep the secret of their theft hidden.
There is the plan of revenge against these married thieves by relatives of their victims. Being sexually dominated by the couple is a high price paid by one of the relatives, a beautiful young woman.
The fourth line involves professors that are working with foreign terrorists and want to give them the plans and the prototype for the secret weapon. These professors support a group led by perverse multi millionaire Nathan Twine that sees the World War II pro-fascist American poet Ezra Pound as their inspiration. Pound was anti Semitic and this group is anti-Israel. In this group is a U.S. Senator who served in Gulf War I and came to his office through a record of heroism that is not true
The last line is the undercover efforts of an FBI special unit and the Israeli secret police to uncover the plot and prevent mass murder.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
AND THE AMERICAN SOUL

Essays on the songs and influence of a Cultural Icon
Early 2011 from McFarland Publishing.

I was always trying to shoot for the moon. I had some lofty ideas about using my own music, to give people something to think about--to think about the world, and what's right and wrong. I'd been affected that way by records, and I wanted my own music and writing to extend themselves in that way.

Bruce Springsteen

100% of the author's royalties will go to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey

David's creative writing ranges from a philosophical fantasy about mystical cats to a gritty reality drama of urban angst to a historical novel and a historical play based on the authors he has written about. As for his non-fiction, David is a fan first. He greatly admires the people he writes about and wants to have others learn about these authors so they can share in his enthusiasm

Recent Accomplishments:

January 2017
Poems: Permutations Among the Nightingales, Shadeseekers Press

November 2014 
Movies in the Age of Obama, NY: Scarecrow Press, essays

November 2014
The Luminary (Uni. of Lancaster, UK) Short Story: “Thanksgiving”

May 2014
The Pomona Valley Review, Poem: “Postage Due,”

April 2014
The New Union: a Journal for the Humanities, “The Humanities Are Essential for the Progress of Human Consciousness”

April 2014
The Tao (Lourdes.edu)  Poem: “The Book Said”

December 2013
Rupkatha Journal of the Humanities:
 Poems: “Rabid Dances,” “Carolina Flyer,” “Flashback: Dredging Up”

December 2013
W.I.S.H. E zine, Poem “Poems and Bones”

June 2013
The Human: A Journal
A Play: "Aldous Huxley: This Timeless Moment"
                               
June 2013                           
The Muse-An International Journal of Poetry: (http://www.themuse.webs.com)
"To The Truly Strong Man (and Woman)"

May 2013                            
Pomona Valley Review: Poem
“To Mr. Izzo With Love From Wei Ling, 1991”

February 2013
“Setting a Foundation for College Composition:  The Cardozo High School Writing-Reading-Literature Program.” North Carolina Symposium on Teaching Writing, North Carolina State University,

December 2012
The Muse-An International Journal of Poetry: two poems
“Cycles,” “That Which is Imminent”

November 2012:
"Orwell: Language as Politics and Action." Luvah Volume 1, No. 3 (2012): November
Poems: "Deep Curl" and "Hummingbird: Visitation from a Famous Author." Luvah Volume 1, No. 3 (2012): November.

November 2012:
“The Influence of Tony Kushner on Contemporary Drama,” Southern Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference, Durham NC

“Bruce Springsteen and the American Soul: Songs of Conscience on His Three Albums The Rising, Magic, and Wreckin’ Ball,” Southern Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference, Durham, NCa

“Isherwood’s Prater Violet: the Novel as a Spiritual Journey through The Bhagavad Gita”
Southern Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference, Durham, NC

June 2012:
The Muse-An International Journal of Poetry (http://www.themuse.webs.com) Four poems: 'The Vision of Dame Kind: Every Picture Tells a Story', 'Sermons in Cats (for Aldous Huxley)', 'The Art of Seeing' and 'The Well of Silence'

Appointed to Editorial Review Board of publisher Rowman & Littlefield

April 2012:
Luvah: Journal of the Creative Imagination, "Thornton Wilder and Mysticism: an Exegesis of his Early Plays"

March 2012:
"Teaching the Introduction to Literature Course," Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice.

January 2012:
Review Board: Diesis: Footnotes on Literary Identities.

May 2011:
Sylvia Lyons Render Award of the Charles Chesnutt Association for the book Charles Chesnutt Reappraised, presented at The American Literature Association Conference Boston, May 26.

April 2010:
Raleigh Little Theater, North Carolina, discussed Thornton Wilder's Our Town after the perfromance.

March 2010:
Christianity and the Detective Story-Christianity and Literature Conference, Pace University, NYC. Paper: "W.H. Auden's 'The Guilty Vicarage.'"

Sept 2009:
Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium, Monmouth University, New Jersey, "Bruce Springsteen Live: Transcendental Celebration."

June 2009:
International Virginia Woolf Conference, Fordham University at Lincoln Center, Panel Chair: "Woolf and the City."

May 2009:
Conference on Consciousness, Literature, and the Performing Arts, Lincoln University, England, 1. "Mysticism as a Literary Theory"; 2. "Reading from Maximus in Catland, a Mystical Novella"

Nov. 2008:
A Tribute to Laura Huxley, Los Angeles Philosophical Society.

Oct. 2008:
Thornton Wilder in the 21st Century, College of New Jersey, "Wilder's Cosmology"

July 2008:
Aldous Huxley International Symposium, Huntington Library, San Marino CA, "Aldous Huxley's Time Must Have a Stop: A Mastery of Mysticism.

July 2006:
Thomas Paine's Legacy - Three Centuries of Revolution in Philadelphia: Lecture on activist Scott Nearing, a leading social activist before World War II.

June 2006:
Triad Stage (Greensboro, NC).
Lectured on Thornton Wilder at the conclusion of the play The Matchmaker.

April 2006:
Speaker in the Fiction Writers Series, Barton College, Wilson. NC.

Dec 2005:
MLA Annual Conference - "Schopenhauer and Iris Murdoch"

Charles Chesnutt Reappraised
Just Published:

One of the best known and most widely read of early African American writers, Charles W. Chesnutt published more than fifty short stories, six novels, two plays, a biography of Frederick Douglass, and countless essays, poems, letters, journals, and speeches. Though he had light skin and was of mixed race, Chesnutt self-identified as a black man, and his writing was often boldly political, openly addressing problems of racial identity and injustice in the late 19th century.

This collection of critical essays reevaluates the Chesnutt legacy, introducing new scholarship reflective of the many facets of his fiction, especially his sophisticated narrative strategies.

Huxley’s Brave New World: Essays

Aldous Huxley’s prophetic novel of ideas warned of a terrible future then 600 years away. Though Brave New World was published less than a century ago in 1932, many elements of the novel’s dystopic future now seem an eerily familiar part of life in the 21st century.

Review from Choice, April, 09: Brave New World remains Huxley's best-known and most influential work, and the essays in this collection take a variety of approaches-literary, political, psychological, philosophical, social, economic, aesthetic-to Huxley's famous dystopia. George Orwell's 1984 figures in several essays. In sum, the varied perspectives in this interesting, accessible collection provide a useful picture of Huxley and his vision of a possible future. Summing up: Recommended. H. Benoist.

The Influence of Mysticism on 20th Century British and American Literature

This volume discusses the relationships between the philosophy of Mysticism, which traces its lineage back into prehistory, with that of the world of more traditional philosophy and literature. The author argues for the centrality of mysticism’s role in the philosophical and artistic development of western culture.

The connections between these worlds are underscored as the author examines the works of Heraclitus, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Iris Murdoch, Yeats, AE George Russell, T.S. Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Auden, Huxley, Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Tony Kushner, among others.