Savishinsky, Joel: - When Joel Savishinsky published the first poem from this collection at age 40, he was a young anthropologist and gerontologist who never thought he'd grow old. Four decades later, now a grandfather and family elder, he smiles at his earlier lack of imagination. For half a century, his research and teaching have taken him to live with elders in Arctic Canada, the Caribbean, a working-class borough in North London, South Indian villages, and American retirement communities and geriatric facilities, places where he has come to love the grit, humor, passion, outrage, and honest perplexity of older people.He is the author of The Ends of Time: Life and Work in a Nursing Home and Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America, both of which won the Gerontological Society of America's Richard Kalish Award (book-of-the-year prize). Since retiring, he has been transforming his experiences with the aging into poetry, short fiction and essays. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared in American Writers Review, Blood and Thunder, Cirque, The Examined Life Journal, The New York Times, The Poeming Pigeon, Soul-Lit, and Windfall. He and his wife Susan live in Seattle, doing community and political work, while also helping to raise five grandchildren. A recovering academic and unrepentant activist, this is his first collection of poetry.