Web Site:

http://www.jaschakessler.com

Books on Amazon:

An Egyptian Bondage and Other Stories
Face Of Creation
Tahirih: A Portrait in Poetry: Selected Poems of Qurratu'l-'Ayn
Siren Songs & Classical Illusions
Christmas Carols and Other Plays
Collected Poems
Our Bearings at Sea: A Novel-In-Poems
Rapid Transit
Tataga's Children
Sophocles, 2 : King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone (Penn Greek Drama Series)

Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• The Cape May Stories by Robert C.S. Downs
  Posted on 04 Jun 2008 in Fiction Reviews, Short Stories
  

  Rare in our time, the writing in THE CAPE MAY STORIES is superb, even magical in its clear-sighted modesty of style, one that implicitly offers in plenitude, examples of decency. A surprising, and exhilarating, visit to Cape May awaits readers.

• What the Gospels Meant by Garry Wills
  Posted on 15 Apr 2008 in Non-Fiction Reviews, Religion
  

  And if Wills reads as persuasive, it is to himself, if not quite to this reader. Taking his stand before the time of St. Ireænus seems somewhat risky to me, if not downright reckless. I did, however, reflect that there yet remains powerful in this late hour of the West’s history a persistent if unacknowledged ambition of theologians per se to legislate for that cowran, tim’rous beastie, mankind. Granted, in our tradition we have Moses to thank for their vocation.

• Comrade J by Pete Earley
  Posted on 24 Jan 2008 in Biography, Espionage, History, Non-Fiction Reviews, Politics, Russia
  

  It was the goings-on, the kleptocracy that emerged, the sheer blatant thuggery of Putin’s entourage, the vandalism and looting that commenced after 1989, related by Tretyakov, that finally discouraged him, a professional through and through and a Russian patriot. The principles that led to his flight into the cloaking arms of the CIA and FBI are suggestive: leaving behind all his property and possessions, amounting to about two million dollars, was worth it because in his view Russia was ruined and things had gone beyond any hope of redemption in his lifetime. He wanted his daughter to grow up a free woman.

• Crossing Styx
  Posted on 30 Oct 2007 in Essays, Philosophy, Psychology
  

  What happens to children is that they usually pass from believing that everything presented by television is real to a later conviction that “nothing is real.” In other words, the world has become crowded, permeated and possessed by the fictive.

• Plucked from Perdition: One Who Lived To Tell Her Tale
  Posted on 05 Sep 2007 in Essays, Great Britain, History
  

  I was told in Prague at midday that I had to be at the Wilson Station at 5 pm that afternoon, to take only one small suitcase and nothing which could identify me, not even newspaper as wrapping. At the station, the lady explained through an interpreter (another refugee living in the same house as my mother), I would see people I knew, but I should on no account appear to know them.

• Terrors on Terra
  Posted on 21 Aug 2007 in Essays
  

  How grotesque it must have sounded to a child, and how frightening. Outdoors, the sun of Southern California sparkles on the watered green lawn; within, the house is tranquil. And here in this pleasant kitchen sit two grownups, his grandparents, filling the day’s bright first hour with descriptions of disasters around the globe, massacres marching on to catastrophes and death by the thousands. And then these same grownups fold their papers, rise smiling and replete from the table to drive off to work as usual.

• Is There a Doctor in the House?
  Posted on 07 Aug 2007 in Essays, Movies
  

  She smoked a lot, but she laughed a lot too. I could easily support her, I was at thirteen, a good two heads taller — she even looked like Betty Boop! And when her lady partner went ahead or loitered poking through the rough in search of another lost ball, Miss Rothschild would walk on with me, linking my elbow gaily, helping me along. “My poor caddie has to carry my clubs!” she’d wail. And there, at 11 in the morning under that bright, glancing sunlight, facing into the brisk mountain breeze, I’d get a whiff of lipstick and whiskey-tainted breath, mingled with her flossy perfume, her laughter enveloping me in a mist of genial, confusing sensuality. She liked to tease: she set anyone and everyone up, her friends male and female alike; she even set me up. Pixyish, it seemed that was the word for it … yet that “it” always eluded me.

• Once Upon A Time
  Posted on 13 Jun 2007 in Children's Literature, Essays, Linguistics
  

  Suppose one’s made a viable, literate translation that succeeds in conveying the narrative or expository sense of an original. What if it turns out that one’s own culture resists it, and refuses to receive it?

• Centuria: 100 Ouroboric Novels by Giorgio Manganelli
  Posted on 10 Apr 2007 in Fiction Reviews, Short Stories
  

  Americans in this therapy-mad epoch tend to take, rather mistake, an “experience” for that fateful “event.” Perusing Centuria, we may come to understand that the myriad catastrophes blazoned in newspapers and splashed over our screens — love, celebrity, athletic prowess, failure or fame, marriage, illness, crisis, smashup — do not concern the soul; nor can they illuminate whatever meaning life might propose.

• Between Alpha and Omega: Some Observations on Poetry and Poetry’s Task in our Time
  Posted on 26 Mar 2007 in Essays, Literary Themes, Poetry
  

  We lived heretofore in the multitude of villages scattered world-wide amongst the ruins of the Tower of Babel. Civilization’s tapestry, its complicated patterns interwoven from multitudes of poets and poetries, once covered their walls and held our attention. Will there come to be in the global village but one faceless, boring bard who speaks with the reduced, infinitely reductive voice the simplified and platitudinous messages of the Media?