January 19, 2006- Brookville, N.Y. - Themes of searing loss and the search for meaning run through “life as a novice,” a volume of poetry by Long Island University Vice President for Academic Affairs Jeffrey Kane inspired by the life and tragic death of his son, Gabriel, in 2003.

In sparse, poignant verse, the author expresses the burden of grief and the inspiration and wisdom he still receives from his son, who has “made himself known to those of us he left behind, sharing ideas of both comfort and understanding” since his death in an automobile accident at age 21.

“As a novice, a traveler in the open world with only a rare glimpse of a signpost or trail, I stack the words as totems for those who follow,” Dr. Kane writes in the preface to “life as a novice.” “… The few words I’ve found, I share in the hope that those awakened to life beyond the wall of physicality and the gates of birth and death see that others have passed this way, and wandered on.”

According to Time magazine essayist Roger Rosenblatt, “Jeff Kane’s poems have the brevity and the power of Emily Dickinson’s, but they come from a different sorrow and a different endurance.They make you weep and clap. Mainly, they make you feel.”

Judith Baumel, a former director of the Poetry Society of America and the author of “Now,” comments on ‘life as a novice’ as “a moving examination of grief's journey. Fierce, philosophical and lyrical, it embraces Eastern and Western traditions and speaks as powerfully as Emerson's ‘Threnody.’ ”

“life as a novice” is published by Confrontation Press, a division of Confrontation Magazine, the literary magazine of Long Island University. After publishing books on an occasional basis for many years, Confrontation Magazine has established Confrontation Press as a regular book division publishing three titles a year. Other Confrontation Press titles include “While There is Time: Penultimate Poems” by Martin Tucker (2005), and “From New York to Boston,” edited by Robert Hagelstein (2005). Confrontation Press is an independent small press publishing division dedicated to discovering and publishing literary works by beginning and little known writers. Confrontation Magazine was founded in 1968 and has published the work of seven Nobel Prize-winning authors.

The cover price is $14.95. To order direct, please send check payable to Confrontation Press, English Department, C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, 720 Northern Blvd., Brookville, N.Y. 11548. Please include $1.50 for shipping and handling. For further information, call 516-299-2720, fax 516-299-2735, or e-mail mtucker@liu.edu.