A Review of Brackish in Rain Taxi

Poet, novelist, and critic Michael Meyehofer (poetry editor at Atticus Review) shows some love to Brackish in the new issue of Rain Taxi. I am very appreciative of this insightful review. I'm a huge fan of Meyerhofer's poetry. His book Blue Collar Eulogies is just fantastic. But his words about Brackish gave me pause. He understands my work better than I do. And, as I Tweeted the day I read the review:  it's a great thing to be read. It's a blessing to be understood. Much thanks to Michael and to the fine folks at Rain Taxi. 

From the review:

---

The poems in Jeff Newberry's Brackish balance grittiness with restraint, taut imagery with dark humor. the result is an intoxicating lyrical energy about as far removed from pretension and sermonizing as one can get.

. . . [in] Brackish . . . stark beauty deftly interweaves stoic faith healers, the chemical stink of industry, and backfiring station wagons. These poems resonate with the sting of bruised knuckles and unshed tears, and in doing so, they do not wallow in self-pity or yield to self-gratification; instead, through the bearing witness, they whisper almost shyly of possibility and hope.