Viral

<p><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Steve Gerson's latest collection moves from light to dark. It begins with the kind of love poems that could only be written by someone who has loved for a long time. They are rife with powerful images that show us true love doesn't have to fade: your hands in mine as small as birdsong or stay with me as long as ink and paper remember. In part two Gerson shatters us with images of loss like seawater salt like acid rains eroded her resolve into fissures or like planting corn in concrete. The final section of the book Lost takes the reader through the experience of various speakers who suffer trauma. Throughout the book Gerson experiments with form most notably with the erasure poems in the Lost section. This book begins with bird song but it ends with an AK 47 and the Apocalypse. This great collection of poems is a knockout.</p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p>-Dr. Beth Gulley author of <em>I Am Your Fish   Drowning In Air: Love Poems</em></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Albeit an optimist this poet writes truthfully about the trying times we have all been living through. Recently we have been forced to make frequent pivots - pivots to plans to rules to procedures to hopes to change. Love and losing and loss are the felt arc of this chapbook. This poetic arc suggests continued inspiration for the next phase - finding peace and love and hopefully solutions beyond the madness. Gerson writes but overflowing onto pages into our future written in Chapter 1. These words hint at a positive conclusion beyond Chapter 3.</p><p><br></p><p>-Dr. Stefani G. Buchwitz Director Self Graduate  Fellowship University of Kansas</p><p><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Steve Gerson's evocative poems immerse the reader in what it means to love in our unsettling times. The first of three sections Love transitions from the enclosed and timeless world of the lover and his beloved to our present-day digital world where a love letter no longer handwritten can be deleted in an instant. Losing the middle chapter begins with classic impediments to love: unfaithfulness lack of communication illness. The intrusions in Lost switch from the personal to the world at large: homelessness racism climate change 9/11 Covid and hanging over it all the digital world which we have embraced. Throughout striking images highlight the progression from love to loss as the poems move from the beloved your hands ...as small as birdsong to a bride wearing toxic mascara to a teacher a little lady wearing a reindeer sweater and wielding a gun. Timely and thought-provoking energetic and perceptive Gerson's poems are a testament to the challenges love faces in our viral world. </p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p>-Edie Cottrell Kreisler Professor Emeritus of  English Merritt College Oakland CA.</p><p><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>This second volume of rhythmic incantations cements Steve Gerson's standing as a foremost American poet. Exuding sensuousness pathos and prescience <em>Viral: Love and Losses in the Time of Insanity</em> brilliantly captures the urban landscape amid the pandemic as expertly as its counterpart <em>Once Planed Straight</em> evokes enduring images of the heartland. Gracefully and poignantly etched <em>Viral </em>contains fifty-two exquisitely drawn poems nested in the pristine arcs of Love Losing and Lost. The braided themes range from enduring love to vaccine refuseniks to the national shame of school shootings involving 'another child another child' as Gerson eloquently weeps.</p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p>-Dr. Robert Cottrell author of<em> Izzy: A Biography  of I.F. Stone </em></p>