Guernica Editions

The subtitle, One Hundred Poems Hovering Between the Absurd and the Existential, to J. J. Steinfeld's new poetry collection is the key to unlock the world view the poems embody: woe and glory. Side by side are sorrow and exaltation, fear and laughter, and, above all, there is the astonishing intelligence of this high-energy poet who holds onto childlike wonder and awe of life while conducting a scintillating and profound existential dialogue with the reader. Buckle up.

Picture J. J. Steinfeld walking down a busy street. He carries a book in each hand; one is maybe a prayer book and the other a book of jokes. What he expects in this neighbourhood is mostly bad news. A small crowd listens while the poet defines the nature of irony. He says: “I thought that Heaven would be so much different.” The poems are best when the knife cuts closest.

Effusive and buoyant—these carefully drawn poems shape existential questions about living and dying in the twenty-first century. Offering “morsels of wisdom and enchantment” (“Congratulations”) about “change” (“Handwritten Love Letters”), the expressive poems showcase Steinfeld’s eminent powers of observation committed to a broad range. The poems’ topics invoke varied emotions identifiable in the title of the potent, closing poem, “Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be.”

Once more, J. J. Steinfeld stretches the boundaries of the absurd and the existential, hoping to wake us up to the absurdities of the modern world. These poems achieve an intriguing alchemy between the strange and the chilling.