Norman J. Weinstein

Biography

Norman Weinstein was born in Roanoke, Virginia and also lived in France, Greece, New York City and, lastly, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has degrees from Roanoke College and Columbia University. He has been a military news correspondent, an English teacher, a feature writer for two decorative arts magazines, and a playwright as well as a poet.

A note from Emily Eve Weinstein on her father:

"My father has always been about adventure, one after another. But one shock that took us all by surprise was how a year and a half ago he announced that he and my mother were moving to North Carolina. Okay, so that was a bit mind-blowing, but then dad started writing again. At first a poem a day, sometimes two. Bits of paper with fascinating stories, sonnets, rhymes. My publisher Patrick Grace visited Dad from West Virginia and then the following week Dad was asking me to design a cover. This is my father’s second full-length book of poems. The other he composed 45 years ago, based on our adventures in Greece where my parents had moved in search of long ago and far away. We had a printing press in the basement which I thought was for my father’s writing and schoolwork. Turned out it was for an underground newspaper aimed against the military dictatorship that had swept away in a matter of a few hours a freely elected democracy. As a bookmaker/painter I only wish I had that relic of a printing press now. Anyhow, Greece not being safe any longer, we traveled back to the States. Then after a few years my father got restless again and this time we landed in France. Adventure has indeed been a continuing theme and First Love is certainly further proof of that."

- Emily Eve Weinstein, April 26, 2015.

Written two months prior to her father's passing.

Norman Weinstein, Author of First Love & Other Poems. August 27, 1927-June 26, 2015

An Excerpt of Poems from First Love & Other Poems

Raphael's Corner

For him it was a world quite adequate,

A simple corner of a living room,

A space familiar as each breath you take

And where when evening came he could resume

The occupation of his small domain,

Where he could sit and read and contemplate

And search for visions lost he might regain,

Which youth in him might somehow activate.

How wonderful if each and every one

Of us could find a special corner where

We might just find our lives have but begun

If gazing deep into ourselves we swear

To strive to know just what we were at best

And seize those youthful dreams we once caressed.

A Modest Immortality

About heaven and hell, I know little,

And as to immortality nothing at all,

But I do welcome my special ghosts,

The ones we all possess,

Who might visit us unbidden

Through simple means.

For instance,

When celery grows a little limp,

My wife sets it in the fridge

In cold water in a bowl

And adds a touch of salt.

Every single time it works,

And voila, the celery's firm again.

"Neat trick," I say admiringly.

She smiles before she says,

"Your mother taught me that

Almost before I didn't know

Boiling water wasn't hard to do."

Strange, for that moment I saw and heard my mother, long gone,

Standing before me and looking pleased,

And so I saw and heard her once again,

Immortal for an unexpected moment

And as long as I shall live.

- Norman Weinstein, 2015

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