Praise for The Cabinetmaker's Window

"Mr. Scafidi appears as a poet who is nearly instantaneously able to absorb the reader into his ultra-sensory, physical, filigreed way of perceiving the world; sell them the dire import of his particular concerns, cares, and loves; and leave them believing verse can itself be a way of creating and sustaining hope. If that is not a way for poetry to help us survive, I’m not sure what is."

— Amber M. Stamper, 32 Poems

"A new collection by Steve Scafidi is a cause for celebration, and in line after line the poet offers the tools and the terms —'fine-hewn fiddled-with evidence of grace' —with which we migh rejoice. The Cabinetmaker's Window is splendid: as lilting and playful as men who christen one another with preposterous nick-names, and as weighty and contemplative as a mind and hands working together to wield a lathe. Scafidi casts his gaze upon the bright and the terrible, and the poems he builds are full of worship and consolation."

— Tracy K. Smith

"This book can be read as a kind of antidote to the heady bumbo-jumbo jibber-jabber of our detached poetic times. It believes in a world without embarrassment—'the one where you live in one place until you die.' It believes in other things, too—family, long love, 'the rocking chair bookcase Chester Cornett built,' 'a walnut handle. . . like / a sky as if the stars are dark,' and many other hand-made earth-born examples of what Scafidi calls 'dumb-luck whisky wonder and grace.' You'll love this speaker's gratitude, his willingness to take the long view, his open-heartedness, the community he commemorates and mourns. Even his arguments with death are gracious. This is a book of thanks, a book of celebrations and prayers. A 'ramshackle shining,' indeed."

—Adrian Blevins

"Imagine a poem putting its arm in yours and talking, in language brash and delightful and clear as a bell, pointing its other hand at the bizarre, lovely, crushing, sexy, disappearing world. Now imagine a whole book of that. You're holding it! The Cabinetmaker's Window is wrought of the belief in the redemptive and transformative power of talking to each other of what we love in plain music. There is to me almost nothing as beautiful or true."

—Ross Gay