Customer Reviews

Unintended Lessons

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"Luke Breit's poems fuse his native New York City -- for him, the heart of friendship and love -- with the California feeling of the better world that we are all in the process of creating. In Breit's works, male and female, members of his personal family and friends, all are equal to one another and yet, through his direct and intimate style, maintain their unique otherness. This is his great contribution. Few poets write with a greater sensitivity to equality. That's why you're going to read a book about the future."

Luke Breit's poems sound with his talking voice, a voice full of compassion, honesty, sensitivity, remembrance, stilled passions and passing life, and somehow all like parts of a novel never written...

"Luke Breit's poems fuse his native New York City -- for him, the heart of friendship and love -- with the California feeling of the better world that we are all in the process of creating. In Breit's works, male and female, members of his personal family and friends, all are equal to one another and yet, through his direct and intimate style, maintain their unique otherness. This is his great contribution. Few poets write with a greater sensitivity to equality. That's why you're going to read a book about the future."

"Reading this book is like sliding onto the barstool next to Luke Breit where, 'in the dark convessional of a saloon,' he'll tell you his stories -- of parents and children, friends and lovers, of the longing to connect and the ways we sometimes manage it. There's jazz on the jukebox, baseball on TV, and the next round's on Luke."

Like all good poetry, Luke Breit's Unintended Lessons stares death in the face and helps thereby to clear away some of the pettiness and triviality from our lives. Poetry won't save us any more than Jesus, rock'n'roll or even baseball, more's the pity, but it can, and occasionally does deepen our appreciation for the days we've been granted. Mr. Breit's best poems are a form of illimitable gratitude; you feel them like sunlight on the palms of your hands.

"Luke is a rainmaker. Put him in a desert, get him to recite, and clouds will gather...If I could be a poet, I wouldn't mind at all being as good as Luke Breit."