Jacob M. Appel is a physician, attorney, and bioethicist based in New York City. He is the author of seven collections of short fiction, five novels, and a collection of essays. His short stories have been published in more than two hundred journals and have been short-listed for the O. Henry Award, Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. His commentary on law, medicine, and ethics has appeared in the New York Times, New York Post, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Detroit Free Press, and other major newspapers. He taught for years at Brown University and currently teaches at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
The narrative poems in Jacob M. Appel's The Cynic in Extremis cast
a cold eye on present and past, personal and political. But like
the cynics in their classical conception, the poet's subtext here
is hope, at least love, and living without illusion in the extremis
of the quotidian. These are mordantly moving, even entertaining
poems, always thoughtful and frequently elegiac.
--Dan O'Brien, author of War ReporterLike his
stories--approachable, insightful, and touched with a tinge of
sadness for what was and, indeed, is--Appel's poems speak in
straightforward, plain language to raise the curtain on the
intimacies of his world. New York City with its pigeon lady, the
palsied pharmacist, Luigi the barber, beak-nosed Molly Seward's
father, and, oh yes, the many girls who "left me breathless" and
alone. You can almost hear their footsteps walking the cement
pavement. Although good-humored and delightfully smart-alecky, the
collection has a dark undercurrent, for it is Holocaust-haunted as
he is, as we all are who escaped the horror but are doomed to
remember and bear witness.
--Alice Friman, author of The View from SaturnFrom this masterful
collection arises the sense that, with the end so woefully
unpredictable and fate so fickle-hearted, to waste any moment
amounts to a sin. Quirky characters, often full of longing and
regret, pepper Appel's work, like the uncle so cynical he "steered
clear of con games like synagogue/ And life insurance" and his
compassionate opposite, the pigeon-feeding, environment-destroying
Mrs. Z. These characters seem to fail to leave a mark on the world,
beyond the poet's eye.
--Brigit Young (from the foreword), author of Worth a Thousand
WordsBoth beautifully written and lively, the poems in The Cynic in
Extremis embrace the world with warmth and wit. The portraits of
family members and friends, workers and teachers, neighbors and a
first love, some set in a time long gone, are wonderfully free of
nostalgia and sentimentality. Human virtue, vice and folly all have
a welcome place, because there's a tone of understanding,
forgiveness and humor that pervades this book and makes it a joy to
read.
--John Skoyles, author of Suddenly It's Evening and poetry editor
at Ploughshares
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