The Steel Veil: Poems

Aging, 1940s Brooklyn, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict haunt these elegiac, passionate poems.

Soulfully introspective and viscerally engaged, Marshall's poetry weds timely depictions of Middle Eastern widows "behind veils heavy / as the steel / veil of empire" with timeless expressions of personal grief and political outrage. Invoking visionary possibilities of being while "riding unsteadily on the rails / of rhyme," Marshall's distinctive voice and elegant lyrics unite this muscled, multilayered collection.