Salt Holds No Secrets But This

"As has been amply evidenced in his previous works, Steve Brisendine has the uncanny ability to put those unfathomable emotions which are germinated by the uncertainty of life into the perfect words. Salt Holds No Secret but This is no exception. If anything, it's a perfect example of Brisendine's skill in crafting the perfect poem to transport the reader to an exact moment. Something as deceptively simple as: "Summer/writes itself in/rockabilly riffs and/termite scrawls/on a 2x2," gives the audience an instant front row seat in the concert of the moment. Deftly intertwining enviable word economy with relatable situations, metaphor, and depth, this book holds secrets that will only be unlocked through multiple readings. Brisendine warns us, "Art must go unmasked and contagious," and Salt Holds No Secret but This does just that, permeating the reader's consciousness with a truth rarely seen, and certainly seldom expressed. Be warned: as with all good art, after reading Steve Brisendine's latest, "There will be a scar."

      -James Benger author of From the Back (Spartan        

       Press, 2020)

"On the cover of Steve Brisendine's book of poems, "Salt Holds No Secret But This", is the picture of a dilapidated shack. Brisendine knows poems are built, stack and pile, skeleton and skin, in a manner architectural, begun with words. When he asks the atheist, the agnostic, and the believer, "how does the green of my eyes taste?, we answer in unison like a bag full of souls. These poems do not allow the reader to look away easily - whether a reader wants to is a hard question they must answer for themselves."

-Paul Koniecki, Terrible Grace (Luchador Press, 2022)

"It might just be a Sunday afternoon in the suburbs, and you might just have taken a swallow of a particularly delicious beer at just the perfect temperature, and you are sitting in the most right, comfortable spot with just the right mix of sun, shade and temperature and in that one immaculate and perfect moment everything drops away. The world is just you and this one second that is the closest to perfect and eternity as you may get. That moment is a poem of the highest magnitude, and this book, Salt Holds No Secret But This, is full of those moments, those poems. These poems are moments acutely aware of their beginning and are equally precise in their awareness that these moments are ending."

-Jason Baldinger, This Still Life (co-authored with

     James Benger, Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2022) 

"In his latest offering, Salt Holds No Secret But This, Steve Brisendine masterfully tackles big issues like death and pain. He expertly weaves Biblical allusions and concepts together with everyday experiences. For example, he plays with the prophetic concepts of foretelling and forthtelling. He refers to the "cloud by day" and the "fire by night" that guided the Israelites when they left Egypt. Yet he shows us his drunk friend passed out on the kitchen floor. Like e.e. cummings, Brisendine plays with punctuation (particularly the parentheses) to guide the reader through each poem. He reminds us that "wisdom knows both rules and when to stomp them into bits," and that "pain redeems." We come away with a "wordless hymn to the Architect of thorn trees and broken glass" that is both fresh and compelling."

-Beth Gulley, A Sticky Note Alphabet (Alien Buddha Press, 2021)