Hudson Valey Writers Guild member Leslie Neustadt‘s new book, The Sustenance of Stars, was recently published by Kelsay Books and is available for purchase.
Leslie B. Neustadt is a retired attorney, poet, and collage artist. Author of Bearing Fruit: a Poetic Journey (Spirit Wind Books, 2014), she explores the beauty and power of the natural world, life’s joys and struggles, and a commitment to human and civil rights in her work. Her poems have been published in a number of anthologies, including Veils, Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women; The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary American Jewish Poetry; 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium; Rumors Secrets & Lies: Stories & Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice; Musematrix; and Heels into the Soil: Stories & Poems Resisting the Silence. She is a board member of the International Women’s Writing Guild and chairs its program committee. She produces a popular workshop series for the Guild which she created during the pandemic.
Antoinette Brim-Bell, Connecticut State Poet Laureate, and author of These Women You Gave Me, says, “An honest revelation, The Sustenance of Stars traces emergence from traumatic childhood through complexities of self-realization and solace in Jewish womanhood. Tempered language and wry humor seamlessly meld into vivid imagery of splintered dishes and miraculous magnolia moments, celebrating callous beauty inherent in life’s struggles. She considers culpability as her histories are juxtaposed with global histories. Stunning language captures the cycles of life, revealing death’s inevitability, finding the hidden immortality within. She invites readers on a journey of introspection and empathy, navigating complexities of existence, yet finding solace.
Myra Shapiro, author of When the World Walks Toward You, adds, “Leslie Neustadt is a passionate poet. I am awed and instructed by “The Night She Came to Dinner.” The “She” is Eleanor Roosevelt, the family house is humble, the tone quiet and moving: “She planted seeds of how a woman / makes her life a devotion.” The poems take us through a life, the practice of devotion—for family, for justice in the world; it is a communal reach. We feel her excitement in a letter to another poet: “ … you’ve loosened my tongue. I want to sling metaphors . . .” Later poems call for humane action all over the world. Neustadt expresses: “Have endless wars seeped / into my granddaughters’ lives?” May her words grow forth: “Seek justice. We must … ”
There will be a Book Launch and Birthday Bash to celebrate Leslie and her new book on Thursday, September 12, 5:00-7:00 pm, at The Argus Hotel & Cocktail Lounge, 8 Thurlow Terrace, Albany, NY 12203. Click here for more information and to RSVP.
Copies of The Sustenance of Stars are available via Amazon and Kelsay Books.
