Cliff Dwellers

Cleanly divided in two parts--one that looks out at our appalling political world, the other that looks in to contemplate the troubled mind and heart--Harry Newman's Cliff Dwellers asks, Can these things, in truth, be taken apart? For years, the masters of war, our neighbors, our friends, and our own self-interest have conspired to tell us to look away from the atrocities committed in our names all over the world--from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq to Gaza to the streets of our cities. All the time, daily, we are accompanied and haunted by the shifting and unseizable shadow of what we know and feel. Harry Newman's poems observe this human predicament with fury, grace, and love. There are no excuses in these poems, and there is no looking away.--Edwin Frank

Harry Newman studied Chemistry and Mathematics at MIT before deciding to focus on writing. He's the author of the chapbook, Led from a Distance (Louisiana Literature Press), a cycle of political poems on the social and moral costs of a culture of militarism and endless war. His poetry has appeared in Salmagundi, Rattle, Ecotone, Warscapes, Saranac Review and many other print and online journals. He has written several plays  including The Occupation, Dry Time, The Dark, and a translation of Patrick Süskind's Der Kontrabaß (The Double Bass), which have been performed at theaters around the U.S. and in Europe. The son of a groundskeeper and a working mother, Harry grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Miami. He currently lives in Queens, New York.