Write On Detroit
“John Jeffire's tight, unflinching poems pack a real wallop. He knows these people, and he knows these streets. He can be tough, and he can be tender--and funny too. There's nothing unearned in these deeply felt, authentic poems. Like the people in his poems, he works hard, and he plays hard, and it all pays off in this moving, memorable collection.” —Jim Daniels, author of Eight Mile High
“John Jeffire's poems are perfectly urban: gritty and beautiful, tragic and comic, tough and tender, profane and sacred. He finds the lyricism of the polluted River Rouge, of the piss smell behind the dumpsters, of the child home from rehab, of the lionfish. He knows that ‘we learned our commandments/ by breaking them’ and he offers us, through these poems our penance, our forgiveness, our Detroit psalms.” —Gerry LaFemina, author of Zarathustra in Love
“The poems of John Jeffire are first magical and then harsh. They are never sentimental. The poet re-creates a boyhood in the streets and alleys of an earlier Dearborn, but the poet is not a tour guide. There is pain here and sorrow, but there is never self-pity. These are manly poems that took my breath away.”
—Rhoda Stamell, author of Detroit Stories
“…a terrific one for our city.” —Philip Levine, former Poet Laureate of the United States
Stone + Fist + Brick + Bone