Where People are Trees

Blesses us with alchemical wonder, irony and light, as he travels from the roots of mystery Where People Are Trees, imagining a protective canopy for refugees under the stars, as old friends embrace the world within, momentarily blinded by a miracle. Steve Minkin's spell-binding poems inspire our becoming with an aura that sanctifies our life, extolling friendship in these hard times, laughing Where People Are Trees with poetry's vulnerable pain and joy. As Steve Minkin says: "At a certain point poetry asks you/why you are here/ how much are you prepared to give up/ how much are you willing to lose."

-Terry Hauptman, author of Fallen Angels and Rubies in the Mud



When Steve Minkin tells us "the poem came to me / in a poem-fertile forest/ but I had neither paper nor pen," we are struck by wisdom and the power of language; when he tells us of a homeless person, whose shopping cart is "perfectly packed" by "someone who clearly cares/ about the efficient use of space,/ (perhaps an ex-marine)," we glimpse the empathy, imagination, keen observation, and quiet thrum of resistance and protest that fuel the heart of Minkin's poems.

-Sawnie Morris, author of Her, Infinite, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize



Steve Minkin is a Truth Traveler--not just geographically but also spiritually. In Where People Are Trees transformation takes root in the truths he finds and speaks. Epiphanies are found and lost ("for a moment / I could see how far I could not see") as they often are in the truth seeker's shape shifting world. In these poems Minkin searches from Sikkim, Chiapas, Singaraja in Bali, Iowa in November, The Bronx, Long Island, the Turkish Bosporus, Cuba, Colorado, Bangladesh to his home in southern Vermont. His journey brings to mind Eliot's famous lines: "We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.

-Tim Mayo, author of Thesaurus of Separation (finalist for the 2017 Montaigne Medal and the 2017 Eric Hoffer Award)