Margaret Szumowski is a full professor at an inner city community college, Springfield Technical Community College, where she teaches writing. Of all her teaching jobs, the community college is her favorite with students from age 16 to 80 and of all ethnic backgrounds. In 1998, she was recognized by the college for leadership and innovation. In 2001, she was honored with the Andrew Scibelli Chair for excellence in teaching.

About The Night of the Lunar Eclipse:

"Margaret Szumowski dances a delicious and wild step of the self whose desires are embodied in almost everything touched and seen, whether 'God in His Huge Red Robe,' or 'Beauty Pageant in Sarajevo,' a 'Girl Turned to Stone' or a 'Sauerkraut Supper.' In this world of the lunar eclipse, the ordinary quivers in its skin, 'with the light from our rough bodies,' and even Frackville 'with its tedious houses and one-way streets' begins to 'mambo, mambo.' The lunar eclipse here is not without pain, the darkness cast by the loss of a beloved brother, the losses between husbands and wives, the gap between oneself and another and the bride that breaks between, the loss of one's own name and identity, but in this darkness some other light begins to burn, a desire that becomes a dance of being. These poems are convincingly ecstatic; Hafiz in Frackville, the beloved is everywhere, and each particular place, vividly evoked is perched precariously on the rim of paradise."
—Rebecca Seiferle