Put a Comma After Love by Norma Ketzis Bernstock

“Norma” Ketzis Bernstock candidly explores her roles as wife, ex-wife, lover, and ex-lover, discovering who she is in relation to others, and who she is on her own. The narrative flow of her journey traces when she was strong and when she was weak, and each poem is tenderly crafted, insightful, and brimming with hard-earned wisdom. We say Bravo to this new collection!”

–Robin Stratton, Boston Literary Magazine

Put a Comma After Love maps a narrator’s survival after the end of a marriage.  It has the glint of broken glass that is more beautiful in itself than the original bottle was. “Where is the heart?” Norma Bernstock asks. It is here, and here, and here, this book answers. The pulse is in the precise, discovered language that Bernstock deftly paces down the page with inspirited line breaks and turns of phrase.  This chapbook memorably charts an indefatigable search and rescue of the self.

–BJ Ward, author of Jackleg Opera

To read Norma Bernstock’s new poetry collection is to engage in bliss. Put a Comma After Love examines love, rage, happiness, mess, and endings met with a decisive period. This work took me on a journey guided by direct arrows to the heart . . . “no spare bulbs in the closet” and “I took the rug” . . . caught my breath. And yet there is tenderness and awakening. Bernstock puts on the page what we think about even when we have no answers. Here lies the beauty of page after page.”

–Julie Maloney, award-winning author and founder/director of Women Reading Aloud