A Split Second of Light

Written with passionate precision, Florsheim's collection goes to the core of a wide range of intrigues and interests: the Holocaust, artworks, the mysteries of the everyday. Urbane and astute, his work is empathetic and clear-headed. A rich offering.
-David Meltzer, author of David's Copy: The Selected Poems of David Meltzer
Among the pleasures of Stewart Florsheim's A Split Second of Light are his incisive character portraits of parents and family and the dramatic incidents he conjures out of paintings by Caillebotte, Chardin, Bonnard and others. Florsheim's gift for scene-setting and succinct phrasing, and his eye for revealing detail, make this a rewarding collection.
-Chana Bloch, author of Blood Honey and translator of Yehuda Amichai and other Israeli poets
Stewart Florsheim is one of those rare poets who has it all: chillingly beautiful language that draws the reader into myriad worlds of "riveting silence" and "prayer bells"; great courage to face the darkness, and the strength and wisdom to see that death and life are inextricably intertwined. This is an extraordinary book.
-Louise Nayer, author of Burned: A Memoir
In A Split Second of Light, Stewart Florsheim offers insights into the quiet world of a poet born into a family of Holocaust survivors. And here we find poems that speak softly and carefully about the poet's childhood, about his growing up and traveling the world, about the imagined lives of the people inside the great works of art. Here we find a quiet, powerful book of poems grounded in the reality of a Jewish family, in the world that was handed down, father to son, "See, this is how you carve a steak/. . . His cleaver glided easily/ across lines of gristle/ then he handed me the filet/ blood dripping/ from his hand into mine."
-Charles Entrekin, author of Listening: New and Selected Work
This elegiac verse chronicles love in its sensitive idolizations yet astute analysis of having family impacted dearly by the Holocaust. These poems are a testimony of hope rooted in faith with both their hands linked. These poems call out names in syllables that ring, turning them into what those who people the pages were, beautiful and strong. In these poems, nothing of what is said can disappear unnoticed.
-Andrena Zawinski, Features Editor, PoetryMagazine.com and PEN award winner for Something About.