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.

  In his first book, Brackish, Jeff Newberry dredges up images of his native Northern Florida. They rise like silt in brackish water. They make shapes, tell a story, and then settle until some elusive catfish passes again.
         The book begins with a boy coming of age and ends with the reclamation of that boy by the author. The book is broken into four sections moving from the innocence of anxiety, to fear and rebellion, to recollection and reflection, and ends in realization and wisdom.
        Physical place is always the stage for psychological and emotional movement. Each time the poet reflects upon a place, a space opens for personal growth. However, that space becomes rooted in the land from which Newberry vowed to escape as an adolescent. The realization of rootedness is part of the wisdom reached by the end of this collection. Our roots nourish us; they have fed on particular nutrients from a certain soil and no matter where we are they ground us in that homeland.