Winner of the 2022 Blue Light Book Award\nFlorence Weinberger was born in New York City, raised in the Bronx, educated at Hunter College, California State University, Northridge and UCLA, and has worked as a teacher, legal investigator and consumer advocate. She is the author of five published collections of poetry, The Invisible Telling Its Shape, Breathing Like a Jew, Sacred Grafitti and Ghost Tattoo. Five times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and for Best of the Net, her poetry has appeared in a number of literary magazines, including The Comstock Review, Antietam Review, Rockvale Review, Nimrod, Poetry East, Solo, Rattle, Baltimore Review, The Los Angeles Review, Cultural Weekly, Calyx, Miramar, The River Styx, December, Another Chicago Magazine, North American Review, The Los Angeles Review, Salt, Epoc hand Shenandoah.\nENDORSEMENTS\n"Some poetry simply must be written. It has an urgency that stops us and makes us reflect about our lives, our collective histories, our pain, our joy. Florence's poetry has that quality. Her narrative voice seems effortless, filled with compelling images that magnify her thoughts and emotions. Her poetry grabs us because it's informed by a life fully lived, with all of its hardships and pleasures."- Stewart Florsheim, author of Amusing the Angels (forthcoming from Blue Light Press) It is called "Agapanthus, Jacaranda, Bougainvillea," and it is one of the most beautiful love letters to a city, in this case Los Angeles, that I have ever read. I don't mean "beautiful" as in a touching sentiment - a "beautiful" thought. I mean beautiful as in gorgeous. It's also one of many poems in this collection that I find so fresh, vibrant and consummately skillful it rather depresses me - that a poet can write so well for so long and not be more widely appreciated. I hope These Days of Simple Mooring will get the attention it deserves.- Suzanne Lummis In the poem Whole Grains and Hard, Harmonious Ways Florence Weinberger writes, I take the measure of time. /What's mine was my mother's first/ and asks, How do I spend these final years? Her collection of new and selected poems shows us her answer. We follow her journey of flesh, bone and spirit into the anguish of history which animates the present because her artful amalgam of humor and fierce attention, compassion and hard earned wisdom pulls us from whatever might lull us into mere existence. These poems are gifts that break your heart and fill it with light often in the same stanza, sometimes in the same line. Florence's life work shines with clarity that springs from her piercing vision and fearless voice in which human experience becomes music. I fold darkness into the light, a song I heard sung/ in an ancient tongue.- Mary Kay Rummel, Ventura County poet laureate emerita

These Days of Simple Mooring

Literature & Fiction

Weinberger, Florence

Poetry

Blue Light Press

The Invisible Telling Its Shape: Poems

Fithian Pr

"The poems in Carnal Fragrance are straightforward dispatches from the land of grief and mourning. Observant, controlled, and rich with feelings, these poems take note of the surprising moments, small ironies, odd sensations and quotidian realities of survivorhood. They examine what happens when a loved one dies and you must live on without them, aching to find ways to continue in their absence, surrounded by their lingering presence and yet utterly bereft. Ovid said, Songs have immunity from death. Poems like these, which deal with loss in such a clear eyes way remind us that Ovid was right." description by Amy Gerstler

Carnal Fragrance

History & Criticism

Red Hen Press

Poetry. "Like Philip Levine, Florence Weinberger's poems evolve masterfully from the ordinary into the extraordinary. Consider marrowbones, lovingly boiled down to their essence so her husband can spread sustenance onto bread and eat, his stomach forever flattened by concentration camp hunger no matter how much he tries to fill himself up. Her persistent introspection scrutinizes everyday events such as going to the supermarket and takes them into another realm of meaning. In Weinberger's world, what we wake up to is the first step towards insight and illumination"—Jeanette Clough.

Sacred Graffiti

Small Press Distribution

Poetry. "There is great wit and a sly, honed gravitas in these poems. Florence Weinberger wrestles the ineluctable irony at work in every aspect of our lives, and wins; each poem provides a practical wisdom, and her range is amazing, from Opera, philosophy, and cosmology to family memoir, movie stars, and knuckle cracking. It takes deep experience, great human insight, and a unique intelligence to make poems this fresh, compelling, and yet accessible at street level. On top of all of this, Weinberger's craft is exceptional and delightful, and helps us understand the small and large conundrums of living. This is work of the first order. I love every poem in here--the deep humanity of it all, the keen sense of irony, yet the luminous ability to cherish so much."--Christopher Buckley "With her stunning fifth collection of poetry, GHOST TATTOO, Florence Weinberger will now be known not only as 'a longtime pillar' of Los Angeles poetry but as its newly appointed oracle as well. These illuminating and breathtaking poems reveal those sometimes visible and at time invisible markings left by experience--on our souls, our imaginations and even our bodies. Whether writing the poems of a family album (including a superb cycle of elegies for her mother) or considering the relationship of art to the individual reality/sensibility of a painter or a poet...or when reflecting upon the loss of a beloved and the subsequent electricity of late love, Florence Weinberger always surprises us by taking the unexpected poetic path. This is a book that belongs at your bedside, for those moments the night grows far too long and far too lonely."--David St. John "Florence Weinberger's GHOST TATTOO is a wondrous collection! It is the story of one person accepting and explaining the changing exigencies of life's variation, a life understood through the arts: movies, paintings, music, a grandson's ceramic, and of course poetry. Even so, it is a life that art usually falls short to inform properly, 'leaving gaps the size of history.' Weinberger generously invites us into this wisdom, and here and there, a line of poetry as urgent and insightful and stunning as any being written."--David Oliveira

Ghost Tattoo

Tebot Bach

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Books by Weinberger, Florence