Joseph’s new book of poetry is out NOW! Midnight Sunrise is published by our friends at Main Street Rag Press. You can pick up your copy NOW! Go! Go!
Midnight Sunrise is a collection that breaches edges and grasps the Earth. With gentle yet unnerving attention, Kerschbaum invites the familiar and for granted to wild the heart once more. These poems pulse with awe—for loved ones, for one’s lineage, for life itself. With each breath taken, there is a hand reached. With each precise observation comes a gesture inward, toward mystery. The ghosts are living. The ghosts “haunt/ our suspended selves.”
~Elizabeth Metzger, author of Lying In and The Spirit Papers
A beautiful creation of song and scar, of emotional complexity and simple witness, Midnight Sunrise mingles the natural and human worlds in a series of compelling, remarkably honest poems. From bountiful harvest to decay, the landscapes he presents us with are deeply intertwined with and impacted by our identities. Brimming with both linguistic precision and intimate grace, these vibrant poems remain grounded in a universal familiarity that opens us up to something much greater.
~John Sibley Williams, author of Scale Model of a Country at Dawn and The Drowning House
A discern curator of the deep image, Joseph Kershbaum renders the ordinary unordinary—if not the domestic made terrifying—in lines as well-manicured as the proudest suburban lawn. His narrator, however, is painfully aware that “manicured lawns / are the byproduct / of pushing back / against the world / that wants to grow wild” (“Weed Garden”). Dripping with sonorousness, masterfully sequenced, each poem advances to the inevitable sense that, as Frost put it, “the final poem is the book itself.”
~Lissa Kiernan, author of The Whispering Wall & Founding Director of The Poetry Barn
Midnight Sunrise is a duende-filled magic carpet ride through the seemingly inconsequential moments of life: dinner with friends, tucking a child into bed. But as Kerschbaum eloquently reveals, nothing is inconsequential. After all, “any ordinary Tuesday in a doctor’s office can sever/the narrative of a life in progress.” In language both vivid and precise, Kerschbaum masterfully captures not only the significance of these moments, but their exquisite and often bittersweet beauty. I’m grateful to him for this luminous reminder that every split second is a gift.
~Kim Noriega, author of Name Me