The 100 wide-ranging and idiosyncratic poems of Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be confront, grapple with, explore, argue with, and ultimately embrace the human condition as they wend their way through the worldly and the otherworldly aspects of absurdity and existence, the ordinary and the extraordinary spheres of being. They are an attempt to make sense out of senselessness.
Sisyphus requests his rock returned /
then makes a fist-clenched demand. /
As for me, I'm getting used to the pushing /
and what passes as singing.
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.
Deirdre Kessler, PEI Poet Laureate (2016-2018)
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.
David Helwig, PEI Poet Laureate (2008-2009)
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.
Mark Sampson, author of Weathervane and Sad Peninsula
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.”
Sandra Singer, editor of J. J. Steinfeld: Essays On His Works