Norman Stock

Poet Norman Stock grew up on West 24th Street in Coney Island. Born in 1940, he spent the first 1-1/2 months of his life as an incubator baby in Dr. Martin Couney's exhibit, which by that time had moved from Coney's Luna Park to the New York World's Fair.  In his poem "My Only Story," he describes his family enjoying free tickets to the Fair to visit him and a letter from the Society for the Preservation of Infant Life asking his mother to pick him up to make room for more babies. Norman's father Zvi Harry Stock was a typesetter with the Jewish Daily Forward, as well as a poet, essayist and translator, and his parents socialized in Yiddish literary circles in Sea Gate. He shares memories of the poet Itzik Manger, who was a family friend, and the atmosphere in which he grew up. Norman Stock's books of poetry include Pickled Dreams Naked (NYQ Books, 2010) and Buying Breakfast for My Kamikaze Pilot (Gibbs Smith, 1994).