The Steel Veil

Poetry by Jack Marshall

October 1, 2008 • 6 x 9 • 126 pages • 978-1-56689-220-9

Aging, 1940s Brooklyn, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict haunt these elegiac, passionate poems.

Soulfully introspective and viscerally engaged, Marshall’s poetry weds timely depictions of Middle Eastern widows “behind veils heavy / as the steel / veil of empire” with timeless expressions of personal grief and political outrage. Invoking visionary possibilities of being while “riding unsteadily on the rails / of rhyme,” Marshall’s distinctive voice and elegant lyrics unite this muscled, multilayered collection.

About the Author

Born in Brooklyn to Jewish parents who emigrated from Iraq and Syria, Jack Marshall now lives in California. He is the author of the memoir From Baghdad to Brooklyn and several poetry collections that have received the PEN Center USA Award, two Northern California Book Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a nomination from the National Book Critics Circle.

Reviews

“Jack Marshall has been gifting his poems to the world for over four decades, and this latest book is a stirring addition to that bounty. With poems grievous in the face of death, angered at political malfeasance, bemused at the marvels and incongruities of daily life, fiercely personal, embracingly global, and sometimes slyly formal, sometimes casually free, this collection is like a sampler of the tropes of his generation, finessed with the riskiness of always being genuine.” —Albert Goldbarth