The Stoop by Jeff Saperstein

These vivid poems, often with surprising twists, invite us to feel the “pebbled brick” of the stoop bite into the thighs of this young boy growing up in Brooklyn discovering his family’s Jewish heritage; invite us to explore his childhood memories and those memories which disappeared as he grew; invite us to see the influence of poems, movies, and books, and how his understanding of the characters and of their struggles grew in him; invite us to smile as he becomes the retiree who is not out there doing what most his age are drawn to.  At each stage mysteries are revealed, as we learn the way he does, and mostly doesn’t, fit the usual molds.

–Chelsea Adams, author of the poetry chapbooks At Last Light and Looking for a Landing, and the novel Organic Matter

Fine poetry must be especially evocative and Jeff Saperstein’s poems resonate with finely crafted imagery, from a youth growing up in Brooklyn through a sensitive man facing the approach of seventy.  Jeff displays an intimacy with classical music, with film, with world history, with literature, with life.  His powerful words allow the reader to glimpse the core of poetry, the ability to create music out of the mundane.  To enter Jeff’s world is to understand how a careful and caring observer can turn subjects such as an uncle who was in a concentration camp and his father’s World War II journal into richly insightful verse.  During this strange time in American history, I took great comfort in the exceptional artistry of Jeff Saperstein.

–Justin Askins is a Professor of English at Radford University.  His volume The Legendary Neversink was published by Skyhorse Press in 2007 and his chapbook Changing Terrain was published by Finishing Line Press in 2011