Paper Rings

About the Book

This collection of new and selected poems by prize winning poet Robert Klein Engler brings together poems that have appeared online and in print over the past few years.

About the Author

Born into a poor south side Chicago family, Robert was eleven when his father died. After that, he went to work delivering newspapers. Robert eventually studied philosophy at the University of Illinois and was the first in his family since they came from Europe to graduate from college. He now holds degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana and The University of Chicago Divinity School. After college Robert settled again in Chicago. Even though he was gay, he began work at R. J. Daley College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago. When the liberals came to power in the nineties, with their polices of Affirmative Action in education, Robert ran into political and labor union difficulties. Although he was a department chair with an exemplary record for many years at the City Colleges of Chicago, he was “ethnically cleansed” and banned from the college by the Chancellor in May, 1997.