Tidelines

Tidelines

Russell Steinke sometimes employs quotations from famous poets as prompts for his own highly original compositions. His usage is both teasing and admiring and this friendly approach characterizes all his work. His lines are jaunty, deeply serious, thoughtful but never ponderous. He treats our language almost as a jazz pianist treats the keyboard, respectfully but not timorously. His work is as fresh as dew. No "calcified twistings of outworn desires" in these pieces. They take place "just before colliding into something!" Fred Chappell In language evocative and rich in detail, imagery, and reflection, Russell Steinke, the poet of TIDELINES observes, explores, and praises the particulars in, and even the linkages among, inanimate, florescent, avian, marine, and human domains. To a large extent, TIDELINES is essentially a meditative ode to the American Coastline and to the mystical lure of the sea. The Long Island Coastline was/is often a resource, force, and haunt for Russell's poetic perspectives. In addition to tuning in to the music of various poets and to the hum of his own muse, Russell honed his craft within the following context. The help meet the cost of a college education, he worked a variety of jobs: for example, as shoe store custodian and U.S. Department of Interior cartographer and at an outdoor furniture factory and a brewery battling plant. After a brief stint in advertising, he decided on the field of education. While a SUNY educator, he taught undergraduate courses in English Literature I and II, Shakespeare, American Literature I and II, Hawthorne, and Modern Literature, and he presented several professional conference papers on Vaughan, Milton, Conrad, Stevens, and Mailer. Prior to the publication of TIDELINES, he published over sixty poems in various literary journals. During his tenure as an editor of LONG POND REVIEW, a literary journal, it was the recipient of several citations as Best Small Press by THE PUSHCART PRIZE. His idea of time well spent is reading and re-reading Stevens' poetry, Faulkner's fiction, Joyce's FINNEGAN'S WAKE, and comparable works of literary elan. The poet of TIDELINES, Russell Steinke, has published poems in THE CHARITON REVIEW, THE COMSTOCK REVIEW, CONFRONTATION, DESCANT, EPOCH, KANSAS QUARTERLY, NANTUCKET REVIEW, PEMBROKE MAGAZINE, SOUTHERN POETRY REVIEW, THREE RIVERS POETRY JOURNAL, and elsewhere. He has presented poetry readings at a NEMLA Conference (Hartford, CT), NYCEA Conference (Rochester, NY), Walt Whitman House (Huntington, NY), Westhampton, NY Writers Group, and elsewhere. He earned a Ph.D. in English at SUNY-Stony Brook, and he is also a recipient of a SUNY Creative Writing Fellowship and a Mellon Foundation Fellowship.