To be published
November 2026
How Should I Walk? (Fernwood Press)
"In How Should I Walk?, Dan Fleshler’s poems blossom and sprout and explode. He plants his poems the way he depicts himself tending a patch of dirt in an urban garden—gingerly, stubbornly, with grace. This is a book about learning to walk—through illness, through beauty, through the wreckage and wonder that the world keeps tossing at our feet, one step, one fragile sprout at a time. Put your face inside these poems and smell the fertile nature of their loam."
- Matthew Lippman, author of We Are Sleeping With Our Sneakers On
"I’ve been reading Dan Fleshler’s work for nearly fifty years. In his new book, he engages in his most searing, eloquent investigation yet of how to reconcile ourselves to suffering (our own and others). With brutal candor and wry humor, he offers poignant moments of hard-earned, sometimes unexpected hope and solace."
- David Shields, author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead
"Dan Fleshler calls himself a “JewBu”—a Jewish Buddhist. These poems crackle with a self-deprecating humor that seems to me essentially JewBu: taking yourself too seriously in either tradition is definitely not the way one is supposed to “walk.” This book is well worth reading more than once."
- Richard Jeffrey Newman, author of T’shuvah and The Silence of Men