David Silverstein was a well-liked and well-respected figure on the Anglophone poetry scene in Tokyo in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Having already published his first book in Israel before he arrived in Tokyo (Dazzled by Nothing, Tel Aviv: Eked, 1984), he published two more books in Japan: The Suspicious Sympathy of White with Drew Stroud’s Saru Press in Tokyo in 1990, and Apparitions with Richard Flavin’s Jionji Press in Ogawamachi in 1991. Whispers, Sympathies & Apparitions prints a substantial selection from these three books, the last two of which included poems previously published in Americas Review, Chicago Review, and Yellow Silk, as well as in the Tokyo magazines Printed Matter and Edge.

Holder of a PhD in Child Psychology, David Silverstein worked for many years in both Israel and Tokyo as a psychotherapist until his premature and entirely unexpected death of a heart-attack in the spring of 1992.