BEFORE YOU KNEELS MY SILENCE
First Edition: 2014
Includes selections from Magulladón and Ante ti se arrodilla mi silencio in English
Language: English
ISBN 978-0-578-14589-1
5.5 x 8.5 in, 120 pp.
Published by:
Scrambler Books
Sacramento, CA
We live in strange times. As cultivated and precise as we can now be, as interconnected and interspersed, the human condition remains ever so isolated, and upon true reflection, one often feels a sense of aloneness and solitude pulsing about the core of their being.… Jacob Steinberg understands the deeper nature of aloneness and silence. In this collection of poems he explores the sentiments of such experiences, touching upon the sweet perceptibility of love and aloneness. In these pages you will find those solemn moments of fulfillment and despondency. There are curious, unanswerable questions and bare moments where you will taste another’s lips. Here, too, are the strange, vague, imperceptible moments (or non-moments) that we all grasp at in our journey to the center. This book—organized in five sections and translated by the author from his original Spanish texts—plays between dream, scripture, and naked, naked reality. Always, a spiritual fragrance looms.
—from the foreword by Frank Hinton, author of I Don't Respect Female Expression and Action, Figure
REVIEWS
"Within an absolutely concrete framework, the author of this book sketches those intangible things in our daily lives. Following a fantastic tradition in American literature, Jacob Steinberg enters the greatest of mysteries through the most mundane elements of day-to-day life. He makes it such that a phone call, a trip to synagogue, or a dropped thermometer and the ensuing mercury spillage become allegories for immense celestial questions. Never before like now… has a text shown for me—in a simultaneous way, too—[its author’s] presence in and absence from this world."
—Mario Bellatin, author of Beauty Salon and Jacob the Mutant
"Jacob Steinberg has a colossal heart; he uses it for breaking and exploration. His words read me—I am their golem, granted life. These poems are gently wounding, darkly adorable, and tragically perceptive. Before You Kneels My Silence introduces to the reading public a foxy new voice—an adroit and necessary one in this emerging moment."
—Lonely Christopher, author of The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse and Death & Disaster Series