PRAISE FOR the sustenance of stars
“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. Leslie Neustadt invites readers on a journey of introspection and empathy, navigating complexities of existence, yet finding solace.”
—Antoinette Brim-Bell, Connecticut State Poet Laureate, author of These Women You Gave Me
“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 …’”
—Myra Shapiro, When the World Walks Toward You
Kelsay Books, 2024. Cover art by Victoria Rusyn.
“Ms. Neustadt’s luminous, tender poems are attuned to her personal life, as well as the complex conversations of our time. Her poems are open, dazzling, and deep. Her searching spirit responds to the paradoxical world around her. She is one of those poetic souls who make it almost impossible to remember our world before her poetry came to examine it.”
—June Gould, author of Beyond the Margins: Rethinking the Art & Craft of Writing
“Leslie B. Neustadt’s The Sustenance of Stars brings forward devotions of imagination. There’s a hush at the center of these poems, though the worlds they describe are hard. These poems are prayers and whispers and make a rich music.”
—Stephen Kuusisto, author of Old Horse, What Is to Be Done?
“Poetry can have an impact on people. It has the potential to shake the Earth.”