Winner of the 2022 Blue Light Book Award
Florence 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.
ENDORSEMENTS
"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
