Brackish (Aldrich Press, 2012)
A review of Brackish by Dominka Wrozynski at Apalachee Review
A review of Brackish by Guillermo Cancio-Bello at The Florida Book Review
A review of Brackish by Justin Evans (Hobble Creek Review editor)
A short review of Brackish by Brenda Rose at the Georgia Writers Association blog.
Brackish is available from Aldrich Press or Amazon.com.
A review of Brackish by Dominka Wrozynski at Apalachee Review
A review of Brackish by Guillermo Cancio-Bello at The Florida Book Review
A review of Brackish by Justin Evans (Hobble Creek Review editor)
A short review of Brackish by Brenda Rose at the Georgia Writers Association blog.
Brackish is available from Aldrich Press or Amazon.com.
Praise for Brackish
Brackish evokes every bit of elegy for the grueling life of a working class family as does Philip Levine’s They Feed They Lion. Jeff Newberry’s Port St. Joe, Florida, stuns us, though not with a pictorial Florida beach, but with the non-tourist view of growing up in a paper mill town that nearly destroys its people and the gulf waters. These luminous and color-tinted snapshots include a father never quite present, swallowed by work and stench of pulp mill; the kids who dare not have hope, so daredevil sometimes to their ends; the fishermen weighted by nets that don’t bring in enough to survive. Yet a watchful narrator dances his way out of this tragedy, made wiser, always glancing back.
~Mary Jane Ryals, Poet Laureate of the Big Bend of Florida and author of Cookie & Me and The Moving Waters
Brackish is an illuminating and pitch-perfect portrait of a region and a people, and Jeff Newberry’s wonderful collection also serves as a powerful demonstration of the role that the places we call home have in both shaping and cursing us. These haunting, evocative poems will stay with you for a very long time.
~Skip Horack, author of The Southern Cross and The Eden Hunter
Not only is [Brackish] constructed well, but each poem is tight and honed. [Newberry] takes joy in language. He likes to pound-out a sound rhythm. These poems rise out of the work shed of one who has taken the time to gather the tools of his craft.
~Guillermo Cancio-Bello, in The Florida Book Review
Brackish evokes every bit of elegy for the grueling life of a working class family as does Philip Levine’s They Feed They Lion. Jeff Newberry’s Port St. Joe, Florida, stuns us, though not with a pictorial Florida beach, but with the non-tourist view of growing up in a paper mill town that nearly destroys its people and the gulf waters. These luminous and color-tinted snapshots include a father never quite present, swallowed by work and stench of pulp mill; the kids who dare not have hope, so daredevil sometimes to their ends; the fishermen weighted by nets that don’t bring in enough to survive. Yet a watchful narrator dances his way out of this tragedy, made wiser, always glancing back.
~Mary Jane Ryals, Poet Laureate of the Big Bend of Florida and author of Cookie & Me and The Moving Waters
Brackish is an illuminating and pitch-perfect portrait of a region and a people, and Jeff Newberry’s wonderful collection also serves as a powerful demonstration of the role that the places we call home have in both shaping and cursing us. These haunting, evocative poems will stay with you for a very long time.
~Skip Horack, author of The Southern Cross and The Eden Hunter
Not only is [Brackish] constructed well, but each poem is tight and honed. [Newberry] takes joy in language. He likes to pound-out a sound rhythm. These poems rise out of the work shed of one who has taken the time to gather the tools of his craft.
~Guillermo Cancio-Bello, in The Florida Book Review