Monday, March 29, 2010

Jasmine Donahaye

Daisy Fried reviews a new collection by Jasmine Donahaye, Self-portrait as Ruth, over at the Poetry Foundation. I haven't read the book yet myself, but the review has a great lead:
How about a poem that connects anal sex and Jerusalem’s Western Wall? “Fetishes,” in Jasmine Donahaye’s second collection, will make readers run screaming (perhaps in outrage), or else fascinate them. This elegant little poem is in fact a complicated comment on gender, sexism, forbidden things, and access to and uses of sacred places, bodily and historical.
Evidently Donahaye "lives in Wales, is the daughter of a kibbutznik and grew up in England but has spent long periods in Israel and the US." Sounds like a fellow rootless cosmopolitan to me! Former student of Thom Gunn and Robert Hass; has a monograph coming out on "The Wales-Israel Tradition." Published by Salt, I notice, published in the UK; an earlier review from The Guardian is here.

3 comments:

Alan Golding said...

Sounds like Denise Levertov!

Alan Golding said...

Sounds like Denise Levertov!

Jake said...

I reviewed Jasmine's work for the Forward back in January - heavy stuff! There're also a few poems included in the end of the article.

http://www.forward.com/articles/123341/

-Jake Marmer