The 102 poems of Morning Bafflement and Timeless Puzzlement continue the dialogue with and a questioning of the human condition as they hover above what the author sees as the absurd, the existential, and otherworldly elements of life, the ordinary and the extraordinary spheres of being, that J. J. Steinfeld embarked upon in his previous Ekstasis Editions poetry collection, A Visit to the Kafka Café (2018). These poems once again attempt to make sense out the way we conduct our lives, to find meaning in our not always meaningful surroundings, to look at individuals caught in the sometimes joyous, sometimes frightening, yet endlessly fascinating moments of existence and being.

Poet, fiction writer, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published twenty-two books: two novels, Our Hero in the Cradle of Confederation (1987) and Word Burials (2009), thirteen short story collections—The Apostate's Tattoo (1983), Forms of Captivity and Escape (1988), Unmapped Dreams (1989), The Miraculous Hand and Other Stories (1991), Dancing at the Club Holocaust (1993), Disturbing Identities (1997), Should the Word Hell be Capitalized? (1999), Anton Chekhov was Never in Charlottetown (2000), Would You Hide Me? (2003), A Glass Shard and Memory (2010), Madhouses in Heaven, Castles in Hell (2015), An Unauthorized Biography of Being (2016), and Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles (2019)—and seven poetry collections, An Affection for Precipices (2006), Misshapenness (2009), Identity Dreams and Memory Sounds (2014), Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be (2017), A Visit to the Kafka Café (2018), Morning Bafflement and Timeless Puzzlement (2020), and Somewhat Absurd, Somehow Existential (2021).

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