where the writers are
The Short Fall from Grace
The Short Fall from Grace
$15.95
Paperback
See Book Details »

BOOK DETAILS

  • Paperback
  • 9781595409829
  • Blue Light Press

Stewart gives an overview of the book:

"Stewart Florsheim has written a Moebius strip of a book, starting with the nearly unspeakable grief of being the child of ill-matched parents, and proceeding by turns into the amorous education of a young man, the perspicuity of a middle-aged aesthete (many of the poems here take their cue from great paintings), and finally marriage and fatherhood, which loop back with irony and insight to the beginning of Florsheim's narrative arc.  The Short Fall from Grace, then, doesn't occur so much in a straight line--the way an actual fall might--as it does in a circular fashion, owing its trajectory not to gravity but to the irresistible pull of time." --Thomas Centolella, author of Views from along the Middle Way
Read full overview »

"Stewart Florsheim has written a Moebius strip of a book, starting with the nearly unspeakable grief of being the child of ill-matched parents, and proceeding by turns into the amorous education of a young man, the perspicuity of a middle-aged aesthete (many of the poems here take their cue from great paintings), and finally marriage and fatherhood, which loop back with irony and insight to the beginning of Florsheim's narrative arc.  The Short Fall from Grace, then, doesn't occur so much in a straight line--the way an actual fall might--as it does in a circular fashion, owing its trajectory not to gravity but to the irresistible pull of time."

--Thomas Centolella, author of Views from along the Middle Way

Read an excerpt »

December, 1999

 In the newspaper, the faces of remorse:

A congressman running for office

says the US should have tried to stop

the killing of millions in Rwanda—

next to him, photos of a mass grave,

the girl with a swollen stomach.

A German manufacturer comes up

with another billion marks for slave laborers.

When I was a boy, I was so skinny

my mother used to parade my naked body

in front of the neighbors who also were survivors--

See, doesn’t he look like he justcame out of Dachau?

I imagined I might still be alive in the year 2000

and how carefully I did the math:

carrying the ones

as though they were made of crystal.

stewart-florsheim's picture

Note from the author coming soon...

About Stewart

Stewart Florsheim was born in New York City, the son of refugees from Hitler’s Germany. He has received several awards for his poetry and has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. He was the editor of Ghosts of the Holocaust, an anthology of poetry by children...

Read full bio »

Published Reviews

Jun.12.2008

"What makes this is a powerful book is the knowledge of where the author has been emotionally; while the poems of travel, of growing through relationships, of encountering art are all strong in their own...

May.28.2011

A Split Second of Light is that brief moment when (as the poet writes in an early poem) “A pinhole of light appears through the clouds” and what is beheld is captured forever, whether by paints on canvas,...

Member Reviews

sunny-solomon's picture
Mar.07.2008
Is poetry what we really want to read? Today, in our busy lives, when serious blocks of reading time are hard to come by, it seems to me that...