The Tree of Partial Knowledge by Steven R Weiner

Weiner draws us into his world like a conversation between old friends, subtlely slipping into deeper and darker corners of the mind, the songs and tears of the soul. These poems are familiar with darkness and death – “I know the night,” Weiner says – but also with existential wisdom and the humanness to embrace life. There are gems here; watch for them. They are many-faceted, shining like the quiet hopes of a man, the dreams of a child.

–James K. Zimmerman

From the evocative title, to the final “amen” that concludes the collection, Steven Weiner has given us a garden full of flowers, birds, stars, sexuality, and spiritual yearning. But all is not paradise— there is also illness, loss, roadkill, and asphalt. As a night nurse, Weiner knows the terror of the night, but he also knows how to sew the grace back in. And he does.

–Pamela Wax, author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022) and Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press, 2023)

Steven Weiner seeks after mysteries—both natural and spiritual—yet he doesn’t pretend to have all the answers or labor to unravel or explain the unknown. Instead, these often quiet poems look for awe in the daily minutiae of living—watching a friend tend his garden, pulling weeds, visiting the dentist, or looking up a night sky, observing: What amazes me most is how / A sky of roaring furnaces can stay mute. / When one star dies one more ignites […] / In a sky as huge as midnight, / We know only / What we don’t know. And Weiner’s poems manage to sing even when life is at its most indelible, its most emotional, such as Weiner does when recollecting holding his brother in his last moments. These poems sing with the full-throated grace in celebration of this poet’s life well-lived.

–Travis Denton, author of My Stunt Double and When Pianos Fall from the Sky