INTERVIEWS
The Pedestal Magazine > Archives > Issue 47 > Reviews >Stewart Florsheim's The Short Fall from Grace

View Search Result
The Short Fall From Grace
Stewart Florsheim
Blue Light Press
Reviewer: Alice Osborn
 
 
          Stewart Florsheim is bold and brave in his poetry collection, The Short Fall From Grace. His memoir poetry flings itself into the uncomfortable topics of family turmoil (his mother perpetually yelling at his father), his sexual coming of age, and the deaths of his parents. Growing up in New York City, Florsheim is the son of German-Jewish refugees from World War II. His father was a butcher and his mother frequently lashed out at her husband, condemning his simple tastes and quiet nature, and calling him "stupid" to his face. Florsheim flaunts his vulnerabilities, and I applaud him for this. Many poets only want to reveal bits and pieces of their inner lives and experiences, which can leave their work uninspired and limp. Through stark word choices and clever phrasing, Florsheim records the ache of his past so he, like many other Jewish artists, can help others remember what was lost. He also honors individual Jews, notably Kafka ("On A Letter to Milena") and Ilan Ramon ("Moon Landscape"), who died when the Columbia crashed in 2003.

          Besides Florsheim's ventures into memoir, he also masters the ekphrastic poem, joining such notables as John Keats, W.H. Auden, and William Carlos Williams. In his interpretations of European classic and early 20th century paintings, we feel these characters jump out of their colorful oils. Florsheim has the ability to transcend hundreds of years to make his speakers as fresh and engaging as if they were friends confiding their love problems to us. He provides explanations for why the subjects in these paintings are looking away from the viewer, or why they aren't smiling. For example, in "The Jewish Bride" (based on the same name as Rembrandt's painting, 1667), Florsheim describes a Jewish couple having Rembrandt render their portrait and why the female subject has downcast eyes:
 
On the way to his studio they have their first argument —
his plans to go hunting twice a year with his friends
from the Gymnasium, boys she doesn't like in the least
but even if she did she wants to be asked beforehand —
so when Rembrandt poses them the woman wonders
if she made a mistake, and the painter
captures that moment, the woman looking away.
 
          In over half of his art and memoir poems, Florsheim discusses sex or the anticipation of sex. In "Unspoken," Florsheim blends sex and death in five crisply drawn couplets:
 
Growing up we rub our open wounds together.
Your words are coursing through my veins.
 
The lady on six with the numbers branded on her arm,
her apartment always filled with parakeets.
 
When I am inside you I can feel your heart beat.
The eyes should be off limts while making love.
 
Marthe exposes Bonnard as he paints her,
the towel waiting to receive her as she steps out of the tub.
 
Mother waits until I get home.
The undertaker, handing me her wedding band, has no clue.
 
          "Sweet Revenge" includes a twist on the story we've all heard of the college roommate inviting his girlfriend to spend the night as his roommate is also sleeping in the same room. In this poem, the boy invites another boy into the speaker's room as he lays in bed sick. The predominant use of short vowels mimics the sounds of lovemaking:
 
I open my eyes to see them dancing and necking,
then the rattle of buckles and rustle of clothing,
the slurps and moans, first of one person, then two.
I am back in high school, Gayle's bedroom,
our tongues twining as a glob of red lava ascends
to the top of the lamp inches from the bed.
 
          Florsheim holds an obsession with several recurring images, one of which is his naked boy-body. When he was five to seven years old, he tells us that he decided to stop eating and his mother would parade him around in front of her neighbors. They were Holocaust survivors and she showed them how much he resembled a concentration camp victim. To make sure he fattened up, his mother would mix egg yolks into his chocolate milk. This memory is mentioned in five of his poems: "Thirst," "Rappel," "Survival," "December, 1999," and "The Elevator." The latter describes the speaker's encounter with a pedophile in his own building, a supposed safe zone. The other poems almost have the same lines as those in "The Elevator":
 
The man's pace quickens as he approaches me
In the lobby of our apartment building
Next to the Port Authority,
The entry with the fake marble walls,
Floor tiles in the shape of tiny diamonds
And the small elevator that creaks up
The six floors where everyone feels safe,
Refugees from Dachau and Auschwitz,
The neighbors my mother invites over
To see my naked seven-year-old body.
 
          "Mother to Son", "After the Emergency Phone Call," and "Survival" (below) recount Florsheim's grandfather packing his bags for the Dachau concentration camp on Kristallnacht, when he assumed that the Nazis would take care of him since he was a good German citizen.
 
What I want is to tell her
the other face to survival:
how my grandfather had his bag packed
ready to go to Dachau on Kristallnacht
because he believed das Vaterland
would come through for him.
 
          "Survival" braids not only the grandfather story, but also the naked boy image, along with references to Florsheim’s parents fighting with each other. All three poems describe loss of control and submission to greater forces outside of oneself. The glue joining these motifs is the speaker's sixth grade daughter who wants to know about Darwinism.
 
Call it an urge to disappear:
the sky itself becoming so large it envelops us
and we let it, we give in, we do not fight.

          Florsheim's collection is accesible to readers because he is a master of the narrative form, especially in his art poems. His openness with his own life-story and his repetition of favorite motifs help to build rapport with readers, who end up feeling that they know Florsheim and want to follow him on his journey through childhood, early adulthood, and middle age. Such repetition could have led to dull verse with no surprises. However, this is not the case. Even after we're clearly familiar with the discord between his parents or how his childhood neighbors gawked at his naked body, we're still delighted when we read the final lines of "Rappel," in which the speaker watches his daughter descend an indoor rock wall and connects her experience to his:
 
My daughter looks up again,
continues to climb. I can feel the strain
in her thin arms, I can hear her body sigh
as she reaches the top then refuses
to budge. I yell up again, the instructor
has to climb up to coax her down and moments later
she rappels down the wall slowly, her legs
as short as mine were, each kick unsure,
scared, still unaccustomed to anger.

          Florsheim skillfully renders order from chaos. He writes with vision and authenticity about subjects that deeply haunt him. A reader can't help but absorb his work and be moved.
Enter your email:

Home      Register     About Us/Staff     Submit     Links     Contributors     Advertising     Archives     Blog    Donation    Contact Us    Web Design