Lingering Love

About the Book

We all long for someone in this world----

A parent, a child, a sibling, a relative or friend

A lost love---

Or for something---

A better life, a better world or one’s lost youth.

The is book is for all of them, to ease their pain.

At parting we did not part

For they remain in our heart

  Lingering Love is an anthology of the poignant, powerful, and passionate poetry of Sam Brenner, romanticist, political activist and Poet Laureate and former Mayor of the Town of Surfside, Florida. Mr. Brenner’s poetry evokes a broad spectrum of emotions ranging from melancholy, longing, and anger to undying love, exhilaration and joy in the beauty of our world.

The author recounts a vignette of a close friend who seeks his help to win back his wife’s love. Both the friend and wife are great admirers of the author’s poetry. The friend asks the author if he has a love poem that the friend could give to his wife. After reflecting for a moment, the author showed his friend the lead poem in this poetry book:

Lingering Love

The longing in the night lingers on

Long after you are gone.

As of your love I’m never free,

That longing lingers on in me.

I thought I could forget you

And never would regret you,

But the loss of your allure

I cannot long endure.

I cannot bear

That you are gone

When in the air

You linger on.

In parting we did not part;

For you remain in my heart.

I cannot banish

Thoughts of you

Nor let you vanish

With the morning dew.

Each day I love you more

And wonder how the day before

I could have loved you less.

The friend exclaimed “This is perfect!” and he ran off to recite the poem to his wife. P.S....they recently celebrated their golden wedding  anniversary!

About the Author

 Samuel Abraham Brenner was born in Chicago in 1917 and moved to New York City when he was 2 years old. Shortly therafter, his parents divorced and he became a ward of the City of New York, living in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and being shuttled between countless foster homes for the rest of his childhood years. In his teenage years, he lived with his father and stepmother, and was intermittently taken away by his birth mother to live with her until the authorities would invariably catch up with them and take him back. His upbringing set him on a path of longing and being accustomed to deprivation, and to having loved ones taken from him. This theme of longing permeates the poetry he has been writing since the age of 15 that is compiled in his book "Lingering Love". But then he met his future wife, Lillian. They were exceedingly enamored with each other, and had similar likes in poetry and music, among other joys. Lillian is the inspiration for the beautiful romance poems in "Lingering Love", which set the stage for uplifting poems extolling the wonderous beauty of nature that are also a prominent component of "Lingering Love".

Another aspect of Sam Brenner's poetry mingles longing with political activism,  to provoke his readers to strive for a more humane world, and to never forget atrocities like the Holocaust, which is powerfully depicted  in his  poem " Count to Six Million". This riveting poem has been included in the US Congressional Record,  and immortalized in a video of the author reciting this poem that has been viewed  by synagogues across the United States.

The Honorable Sam Brenner is Poet Laureate and Past Mayor of Surfside, Florida, and Past President of the Greater Miami Chapter of the World Federalists Association. He has resided in South Florida for more than sixty years, with Lillian,  his wife of sixty-six years. The author has 2 children, Bard and Leona, and 2 grandchildren, Robert and Stephanie.