Michael Heller, whose work is familiar to many readers of this blog, has just published Earth and Cave, a memoir which includes both prose and poetry, drawn from the writing Heller did while sojourning in Nerja, a little town on the southern coast of Spain, in 1965. Heller was 28 years old; he had left New York City and much of his old life behind, determined to transform himself into a poet. His encounters with the peasant culture of the town, his visits to the pre-historic caves in the region, and his growing awareness of his Jewish heritage in a country that both fostered and sought to extirpate Jewish life, makes this required reading for anyone who has followed Heller's work in poetry and criticism over his long career.
Earth and Cave is 45 pages perfect bound, and represents a big step forward for Dos Madres Press, which has previously published fifteen small, beautiful poetry chapbooks. Edited by Robert Murphy and designed by his wife Elizabeth, this is one of liveliest and most eclectic chapbook series going. So check out Earth and Cave and Dos Madres.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Joseph Donahue's Terra Lucida and "Jewish" Poetry
At the risk of this blog becoming a mutual admiration society, I’d like to recall a passage in Eric’s essay “Shekhinah In American,” which he and Jonathan Barron include in their Jewish American Poetry: Poems, Commentary, and Reflections. At an important point in the essay, Eric discusses Allen Grossman’s call for Jewish American poets to engage in deeper study of traditional texts (back to the sources!), including kabbalah, in order to escape the parochialism of ethnicity. For Grossman, “Judaism is an ahistorical religion” (a truly contrarian notion), and the return to the texts he calls for will, as Eric puts it, “make every Jewish age simultaneous.” What would this retooled Jewish American poem sound like? “Might such a poem sound something like this?” Eric asks—and then, in a brilliant move, quotes “What Do I Know of the Old Lore?,” the opening poem in Robert Duncan’s Roots and Branches!
I often think of this moment when I reflect (as I have interminably for many years now) upon what makes a poem “Jewish.” Eric’s point is well taken: the Jewish knowledge (more—the Jewish wisdom) of Robert Duncan—gentile, theosophist, syncretist, gnostic—makes “What Do I Know of the Old Lore,” among a number of Duncan’s works, into an uncannily “Jewish” poem. So if you don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s rye (oh, the subway ads of my lost youth!), maybe you don’t have to be Jewish to write a Jewish poem.
This is a matter which deserves much further consideration in itself, but I raise the issue here as an opening into Joseph Donahue’s serial poem Terra Lucida, which he has been publishing in magazines and chapbooks for over ten years. I’ve always been an admirer of Joe’s work, which tends toward a post-New York School apocalyptic fluidity (see, most recently, Incidental Eclipse), creating in turn a fractured, comic, even crazed sensibility (not “voice”) which, to use the title of another of his serial poems, is that of “A Servant of God Without a Head.” But Terra Lucida is composed in a different register. Written exclusively in terse but flexible couplets, its engagement with the sacred, and with theological discourse, is more direct. Donahue draws from a number of religious traditions, and part of the poetry’s strength lies in the intertwining, sometimes conflicted patterns of allusion, a kind of overdetermined revelation that is actually hidden by an overabundance of truths.
In In This Paradise: Terra Lucida XXI-XL, this sense often arrives with a particularly Jewish inflection. Here are two passages from XXII (in this paradise):
roam at every full moon.
They bow before the towers of
Jerusalem, bathe in that radiance.
They return to the Garden, and go out.
They fly at night, and wail before
the gates of the fallen cities.
They see the bodies of those
suffering in punishment.
They push on, remembering
The agony of all they see.
They fly back to Eden.
They tell the Holy One, who
grieves there, in the Hall of Illness:
The world is a hollow,
a ghost of water in a ditch...
*
Orders, Songs, Laws,
have been hidden away.
We must try to find them.
We must, we say, go find them.
But we hide, even more deeply,
clinging to an unreal glitter,
as these perfections
struggle to reach us...
Perhaps someone more deeply read in kabbalah than I am can identify the imagery in the first passage, though my guess is that, as in the case of Duncan, Donahue has assimilated and transformed kabbalistic discourse, creating a vision of loss and exile that is perfectly in keeping with Jewish mysticism’s—and Donahue’s own—gnostic impulses. I am moved by the pathos of the Holy One grieving in the “Hall of Illness”; the idea of the Almighty’s helplessness in the face of human wretchedness and cosmic disaster is expressed with wonderful tact and restraint. The second passage, with its vision of ambivalent students of the Law, reminds me of the great debate between Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem over the status of tradition and transmissibility in Kafka. Benjamin asserted that Kafka’s “students are pupils who have lost the Holy Writ,” while Scholem countered that these students “are not so much those who have lost the Scripture…but rather those students who cannot decipher it.” And then there is Kafka himself, who, in “An Imperial Message,” imagined the dying Emperor sending a messager to “his pathetic subject” through the incalculable distances of the
The suggestiveness of Donahue’s work, its invitation to metaphysical speculation and religious hermeneutic, is in productive tension with its sheer audacity. Terra Lucida XXIX (The Adoration of the Sign) conflates Jewish and Christian apocalypticism to give us a vision in which “God has leased the world to Satan / …A world dark as anthracite / & lit by flames of an invisible war.” XXXIX (secret Jews), appropriately enough, draws on the unsettling historical phenomenon of the crypto-Jews of
Donahue is obviously interested in the frightening underside of religious experience—heresy, nihilism, mystical infatuation. Yet there is also great charm in Terra Lucida. Again, from XXII:
In the shade of a tree children
string nouns to verbs.
The earth's all burs, flowers, and hills.
The children go wild with words.
Sky and earth are about to be
bound, are bound already,
in the shade of a tree,
bound in a sentence where
children will read about the letters
that spell the world: fire & water, earth & air
will dream a book with a picture
of the field where they are.
Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge; Book of the World, World of the Book. Donahue puts yet another spin on Tsvetayeva’s “all poets are Jews.”
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Happy Hannukah, a Commentary (part 2)
Here again is the passage from Track that Norman posted for Hannukah:
an o: An "Oh," of wonder or delight, as the light is lit; an "o," or circle, as the year swings round to this holiday once more (hence the pun on "ano"); the "o" is without beginning, without end, a figure, if we linger on it long enough, for the prolific, fertile void itself, perhaps.
pen gift: a delightful twist! The "o" of delight turns out to be the pleasure of opening a gift--in this context a Hannukah gift, I suppose, although the light itself has been the first gift, according to that first stanza. That the gift should be a pen seems multiply appropriate: a pen to write with, naturally; the pen as straight line (penis, natch, Dr. Freud) answering the circle (ahem!) of the o. "Pen gift" might also be an imperative, as though calling for something--this poem, perhaps--to be "penned" as a "gift" in response to the "gift / to the / shammes" in the first stanza.
for you: the "you" who receives the poem now (the reader); the "you" within the fiction of the poem, whoever that might be; the self of the poet, addressed here as in the imperative reading of the previous line.
to re: the second broken word in the poem, or a "torn" one (given how "to re" suggests "tore"), again in the second stanza. The poem starts with unities in pairs, we note, and then multiplies by division--and has now multiplied to produce a near match for "toyre," or "torah." Or, at least, a visual match; to the ear it remains "too ree." More could be done with this division between the aural and the visual, but time is short!
member: The division between "re" and "member" calls our attention to the true etymology of the word, and the folk etymology that accompanies it. In truth, the word derives from re + memor, to be mindful of something. By sight, in English, it would derive from re + member, thus "to supply with a new member." The phallic pun is both obvious and subtle. Obvious, in that the gift of a pen is a phallic one, suggesting new male agency--creative in whatever sense--on the part of the shammes, and linking him to Yesod, or Foundation, the Kabbalistic sephira associated with the phallus, among other things. (For a quick sketch of this sephira, check here, although I cannot vouch for the scholarship behind the site. It's suggestive, in any case, of where a deeper reading might head.)
The subtler phallic pun emerges when we think of the task of "re-membering," of putting severed body parts together, faced by Isis as she gathered the limbs of Osiris. ("I Gather the Limbs of Osiris" is, of course, a famous essay on poetics by Ezra Pound.) Is the shammes, the Jewish poet, lit by a gift and task that echoes hers? Is he--and it seems a "he" in this context--now blessed with the one piece of Osiris that Isis could not find, but had to fashion herself from clay? (Oh dreydl, dreydl, indeed!) The syncretism seems particularly delicious in a Hannukah poem, and will certainly infiltrate my celebration next year.
Thanks for this opportunity, cher Norman! Let's do it again some time.
#
First nightAs we reach the second stanza, the two-syllable prosody of the passage grows more visible; after all, for the first time, words begin to break across the line. Break? Division begins creation here, as each line invites its own reflections:
first light
a gift
to the
shammes
an o
pen gift
for you
to re
member.
an o: An "Oh," of wonder or delight, as the light is lit; an "o," or circle, as the year swings round to this holiday once more (hence the pun on "ano"); the "o" is without beginning, without end, a figure, if we linger on it long enough, for the prolific, fertile void itself, perhaps.
pen gift: a delightful twist! The "o" of delight turns out to be the pleasure of opening a gift--in this context a Hannukah gift, I suppose, although the light itself has been the first gift, according to that first stanza. That the gift should be a pen seems multiply appropriate: a pen to write with, naturally; the pen as straight line (penis, natch, Dr. Freud) answering the circle (ahem!) of the o. "Pen gift" might also be an imperative, as though calling for something--this poem, perhaps--to be "penned" as a "gift" in response to the "gift / to the / shammes" in the first stanza.
for you: the "you" who receives the poem now (the reader); the "you" within the fiction of the poem, whoever that might be; the self of the poet, addressed here as in the imperative reading of the previous line.
to re: the second broken word in the poem, or a "torn" one (given how "to re" suggests "tore"), again in the second stanza. The poem starts with unities in pairs, we note, and then multiplies by division--and has now multiplied to produce a near match for "toyre," or "torah." Or, at least, a visual match; to the ear it remains "too ree." More could be done with this division between the aural and the visual, but time is short!
member: The division between "re" and "member" calls our attention to the true etymology of the word, and the folk etymology that accompanies it. In truth, the word derives from re + memor, to be mindful of something. By sight, in English, it would derive from re + member, thus "to supply with a new member." The phallic pun is both obvious and subtle. Obvious, in that the gift of a pen is a phallic one, suggesting new male agency--creative in whatever sense--on the part of the shammes, and linking him to Yesod, or Foundation, the Kabbalistic sephira associated with the phallus, among other things. (For a quick sketch of this sephira, check here, although I cannot vouch for the scholarship behind the site. It's suggestive, in any case, of where a deeper reading might head.)
The subtler phallic pun emerges when we think of the task of "re-membering," of putting severed body parts together, faced by Isis as she gathered the limbs of Osiris. ("I Gather the Limbs of Osiris" is, of course, a famous essay on poetics by Ezra Pound.) Is the shammes, the Jewish poet, lit by a gift and task that echoes hers? Is he--and it seems a "he" in this context--now blessed with the one piece of Osiris that Isis could not find, but had to fashion herself from clay? (Oh dreydl, dreydl, indeed!) The syncretism seems particularly delicious in a Hannukah poem, and will certainly infiltrate my celebration next year.
Thanks for this opportunity, cher Norman! Let's do it again some time.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Bernstein Review at the Forward
Does anyone out there know David Kaufmann of George Mason University? He's living one of my alternate lives, reviewing Jewish poets in the Forward. A nice little piece on Charles Bernstein's Girly Man to be found here; money quote:
By his own account, Bernstein grew up watching television in the late 1950s and early ’60s — that is, at the moment when a certain unabashed Jewish sensibility went mainstream. And Bernstein learned his lessons well. His choppy, chopped rhythms are both nervously, if not nervily, Jewish. He is, as everyone who has ever written about him has noted, a funny guy. But poetry is not supposed to be funny — it is about serious things, after all — and so it is tempting to dismiss Bernstein as something of a merry prankster, a man who is daring his audience to accept jokes and aleatory noise as real poetry.
Not so fast there, buddy. The genius of Jewish comedy — hell, the genius of Yiddish, if we follow Michael Wex — is that it puts linguistic invention at the service of a militant deflationary zeal. The wiseass Jewish waiter whom Bernstein sometimes resembles devotes his deadpan wit to exploding pretense and false comfort. When that waiter reads the papers, this demolition work can take on a markedly political edge.
Bernstein most definitely reads the papers. If “Girly Man” is both focused and approachable, it is, in large part, because it is sustained by the poet’s horrified reaction to the events of 9/11 and its aftermath. Here are some lines from “War Stories”:
War is never having to say you’re sorry.
War is the logical outcome of moral certainty.
War is conflict resolution for the aesthetically challenged.Bernstein does not usually engage this directly, and in a section called “Some of These Daze,” Bernstein takes an uncustomary turn. In a short series of blogs and letters written on and after 9/11 (here Bernstein is obviously thinking of the diary entries that Whitman published as “Specimen Days”), he confronts the event more or less head-on:
Tuesday morning I rouse my friend Stu from a profound slumber to tell him what has happened to the twin towers. — “They’re ugly,” he says, after a pause, “but they’re not that ugly.”
Monday, December 18, 2006
Nadelberg's Names
[While I modestly but eagerly await the second installment of Eric's commentary, here's my take on Isa the Truck Named Isadore.]
Amanda Nadelberg’s Isa the Truck Named Isadore has received a number of notices since its publication earlier this year, most of them very positive. I think it’s one of the best first volumes of poetry to come along in quite some time: immensely readable, it yields a great many immediate pleasures. The poems are smart, generous, welcoming and often very funny, beautifully poised, nicely lineated, graciously timed. The book is wholly composed, that is to say, it is a "book" in Jack Spicer’s sense of the term (indeed, Nadelberg sometimes sounds like Spicer in his lighter moments), and the poems cleverly resonate against each other in all sorts of ways . There are sixty-three poems, each with a name as a title, in alphabetical order, from Adelaide to Zeb. Drawn from many languages (Welsh, Polish, Hebrew, French, Hungarian…), the names would suggest a multicultural agenda, but that turns out not to be case. Instead, all the poems are instances of current American speech, common vernacular, conversation oddly angled into art. Readers will think of Stein, Williams, O’Hara and other masters of demotic speech acts. Phrases teeter at the edge of cliché, back up into idiosyncrasy, and suddenly pitch themselves, tongue in cheek, into pop culture myth, morals and manners (“Tell her I want to apologize / like the talk show with the / four ladies said…”). The poems praise, complain, bless, narrate, explain, invite, argue, demur. They are in the voice of the named person, in the voice of an interlocutor, in the voice of the poet herself, in a voice from inside, from outside, all of the above, and none of the above.
All of this is reason enough for any poetry fan to be given this book as a Christmas or Hannukah present. Maybe especially a Hannukah present, because what most reviewers haven’t noticed, or have remarked only in passing, is that Isa the Truck Named Isadore is a wonderful addition to whatever it is we call Jewish American poetry. The Jewish fascination with the kabbalistic magic of naming is powerfully at work here. Invoking the name unlocks the mystery of the everyday, as we see in the often outrageous Jewish American scenarios. “Clelia,” for instance, tells of a wedding taking place in a bay on “floatable benches,” after the guests leave their shoes on the dock “Like that episode where Carrie loses her / 400-dollar Manolo Blahniks.” Here is the last part of the poem:
…So
we were exchanging the niceties we
had written for the ceremony and one
of our friends, Marilyn, fell in. She
was sharing a bench with our friends
with larger asses. Marilyn is tiny she
was barely holding on. Marilyn’s
husband couldn’t swim so he didn’t
go in after her but the Rabbi did—he was
an excellent swimmer and a good Rabbi.
A slight delay in the service but
we were all just so happy
that Mar was okay. Her
husband was especially happy he
told the Rabbi if he ever needed
life insurance he should
call right up—he sold it and
could get him a good price.
I could go on about the line breaks and Nadelberg’s strategic lack of punctuation, but what really tickles me is “we were all just so happy / that Mar was okay.” But if this sounds too much like surreal Jewish standup, then try “Elijah,” which I quote in full:
When you open the door
he humps the banister. He drinks
so little from the cup so little so
everyone can’t be sure if
he’s really there or not but
it doesn’t really matter. You don’t
see him climb the chimney, slide
down the roof, it is slate, and into
the open window upstairs. He looks
so pretty in your dresses while
you help wash the dishes
downstairs. He waits for you to
come up, brush your teeth, climb
into bed and onto him. You
crush his arm and it doesn’t
matter either. Next year he will be
elsewhere but tonight this night
you’re the winner. It’s a big night
when you’re sleeping with Elijah.
Why is this night different from all other nights? Don’t ask! Making great claims or offering deep analysis of this poem may spoil the fun, though this is also a serious poem and a sinister one. It confirms my long-held suspicion that I was not the only kid at the seder who was terrified by opening the door for Elijah, and even though I never thought of the ritual in sexual terms (well, not consciously), I now understand the truly uncanny nature of the whole business. After reading this poem, I have learned something new about Passover, something that has been there all along.
One of the longer poems in the book is “Feivel,” which, as some readers may recall, is the name of the little Jewish immigrant mouse (last name Mousekewitz) in the animated movie An American Tail (1986), directed by Don Bluth, with Steven Spielberg as executive producer. The poem grows increasingly phantasmagoric as it proceeds, which is no mean feat given its resolutely conversational mode. Here is a sample from midway through:
If my mother’s best friend were a doll
with a string to pull for a repetition
she would say I hate Florida. Many
people in Florida have had face lifts and
breast augmentations. It is fantastically
scary. An American Tail is also scary
because this little mouse named Feivel
is separated from his family on their way
from Russia to America. They had to leave
because of anti-Semitism. Maus I and II
are also stories in which mice face
anti-Semitism. There are many
Jewish people in Florida. I am
Jewish but I haven’t had any breast
augmentation. If I haven’t had
any breast augmentation or a
face lift then I am not from Florida.
By the end of this poem, Jews and mice and breast augmentation and anti-Semitism are swirling about so that it too has becomes, as Nadelberg says, “fantastically / scary.” But don’t worry:
…In the end Feivel and his
family are reunited. I haven’t found
my family yet but Feivel has and he
taught us all never to stop looking
even if we aren’t looking for
mice. It works for everything.
Thank you, Amanda Nadelberg. This wandering Jew will keep that in mind.
Amanda Nadelberg’s Isa the Truck Named Isadore has received a number of notices since its publication earlier this year, most of them very positive. I think it’s one of the best first volumes of poetry to come along in quite some time: immensely readable, it yields a great many immediate pleasures. The poems are smart, generous, welcoming and often very funny, beautifully poised, nicely lineated, graciously timed. The book is wholly composed, that is to say, it is a "book" in Jack Spicer’s sense of the term (indeed, Nadelberg sometimes sounds like Spicer in his lighter moments), and the poems cleverly resonate against each other in all sorts of ways . There are sixty-three poems, each with a name as a title, in alphabetical order, from Adelaide to Zeb. Drawn from many languages (Welsh, Polish, Hebrew, French, Hungarian…), the names would suggest a multicultural agenda, but that turns out not to be case. Instead, all the poems are instances of current American speech, common vernacular, conversation oddly angled into art. Readers will think of Stein, Williams, O’Hara and other masters of demotic speech acts. Phrases teeter at the edge of cliché, back up into idiosyncrasy, and suddenly pitch themselves, tongue in cheek, into pop culture myth, morals and manners (“Tell her I want to apologize / like the talk show with the / four ladies said…”). The poems praise, complain, bless, narrate, explain, invite, argue, demur. They are in the voice of the named person, in the voice of an interlocutor, in the voice of the poet herself, in a voice from inside, from outside, all of the above, and none of the above.
All of this is reason enough for any poetry fan to be given this book as a Christmas or Hannukah present. Maybe especially a Hannukah present, because what most reviewers haven’t noticed, or have remarked only in passing, is that Isa the Truck Named Isadore is a wonderful addition to whatever it is we call Jewish American poetry. The Jewish fascination with the kabbalistic magic of naming is powerfully at work here. Invoking the name unlocks the mystery of the everyday, as we see in the often outrageous Jewish American scenarios. “Clelia,” for instance, tells of a wedding taking place in a bay on “floatable benches,” after the guests leave their shoes on the dock “Like that episode where Carrie loses her / 400-dollar Manolo Blahniks.” Here is the last part of the poem:
…So
we were exchanging the niceties we
had written for the ceremony and one
of our friends, Marilyn, fell in. She
was sharing a bench with our friends
with larger asses. Marilyn is tiny she
was barely holding on. Marilyn’s
husband couldn’t swim so he didn’t
go in after her but the Rabbi did—he was
an excellent swimmer and a good Rabbi.
A slight delay in the service but
we were all just so happy
that Mar was okay. Her
husband was especially happy he
told the Rabbi if he ever needed
life insurance he should
call right up—he sold it and
could get him a good price.
I could go on about the line breaks and Nadelberg’s strategic lack of punctuation, but what really tickles me is “we were all just so happy / that Mar was okay.” But if this sounds too much like surreal Jewish standup, then try “Elijah,” which I quote in full:
When you open the door
he humps the banister. He drinks
so little from the cup so little so
everyone can’t be sure if
he’s really there or not but
it doesn’t really matter. You don’t
see him climb the chimney, slide
down the roof, it is slate, and into
the open window upstairs. He looks
so pretty in your dresses while
you help wash the dishes
downstairs. He waits for you to
come up, brush your teeth, climb
into bed and onto him. You
crush his arm and it doesn’t
matter either. Next year he will be
elsewhere but tonight this night
you’re the winner. It’s a big night
when you’re sleeping with Elijah.
Why is this night different from all other nights? Don’t ask! Making great claims or offering deep analysis of this poem may spoil the fun, though this is also a serious poem and a sinister one. It confirms my long-held suspicion that I was not the only kid at the seder who was terrified by opening the door for Elijah, and even though I never thought of the ritual in sexual terms (well, not consciously), I now understand the truly uncanny nature of the whole business. After reading this poem, I have learned something new about Passover, something that has been there all along.
One of the longer poems in the book is “Feivel,” which, as some readers may recall, is the name of the little Jewish immigrant mouse (last name Mousekewitz) in the animated movie An American Tail (1986), directed by Don Bluth, with Steven Spielberg as executive producer. The poem grows increasingly phantasmagoric as it proceeds, which is no mean feat given its resolutely conversational mode. Here is a sample from midway through:
If my mother’s best friend were a doll
with a string to pull for a repetition
she would say I hate Florida. Many
people in Florida have had face lifts and
breast augmentations. It is fantastically
scary. An American Tail is also scary
because this little mouse named Feivel
is separated from his family on their way
from Russia to America. They had to leave
because of anti-Semitism. Maus I and II
are also stories in which mice face
anti-Semitism. There are many
Jewish people in Florida. I am
Jewish but I haven’t had any breast
augmentation. If I haven’t had
any breast augmentation or a
face lift then I am not from Florida.
By the end of this poem, Jews and mice and breast augmentation and anti-Semitism are swirling about so that it too has becomes, as Nadelberg says, “fantastically / scary.” But don’t worry:
…In the end Feivel and his
family are reunited. I haven’t found
my family yet but Feivel has and he
taught us all never to stop looking
even if we aren’t looking for
mice. It works for everything.
Thank you, Amanda Nadelberg. This wandering Jew will keep that in mind.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Happy Hannukah! (A Commentary)
Like so much of Norman Finkelstein's poetry, like so much that is either Jewish or poetry, this selection from Track invites commentary.
"First night / first light," it begins: an easy, almost inevitable rhyme in English, although not (say) in Hebrew, and thus perhaps a mark of the poem's diasporic nature. A rhyme across opposition, as though night inevitably produces, leads to light: a hopeful implication, surely. An echo, on reflection, of Genesis: and there was evening, and there was morning: one [or, the first] day. I've never thought of this holiday having any particular echo of creation in it, but evidently it does, or does now.
"First night / first light / a gift": lovely how the silent "g" in the first two lines now steps into the consonantal spotlight. The pairing of night and light could be the gift, or the light as a riposte to the night. R. Cohen says: "there is a crack, a crack in everything / that's how the light gets in."
"First light / a gift / to the": to what? to whom? Grammatical suspense hints at a pun: "to the" as "to thee."
"A gift / to the / shammes": Finkelstein's freeze-frame lineation reminds us that there is a light before the first light of Hannukah, an ohr kadmon, if you will: the light that lights the shammes, which then lights everything else. A poem about inspiration, then? R. Stevens: "We say, 'God and the imagination are one.' / How high that highest candle lights the dark." Every previous line has had two syllables divided into two words; this, two in one, as though that equation, that illumination, had been achieved. "Shammes" is an awkward word, a break from the diction of the first three lines, an interpolation from the Yiddish, and the Hebrew before that: a beadle, a sexton, a servant. On this night, and indeed all through the holiday, the servant gets the first, unnoticed gift. (When they sing "Bo'i b'shalom,' the back-benchers stand in front.)
"Shammes": in it we see "shame" transfigured ("Lo tevoshi velo tikalemi..." / "V'lo nevosh, v'lo nikalem..."--is that right? quoted from memory), also "sham" ("if the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise"). The poet here as servant alit, and able to pass on light.
More tomorrow, on stanza two. A present to you, Norman!
"First night / first light," it begins: an easy, almost inevitable rhyme in English, although not (say) in Hebrew, and thus perhaps a mark of the poem's diasporic nature. A rhyme across opposition, as though night inevitably produces, leads to light: a hopeful implication, surely. An echo, on reflection, of Genesis: and there was evening, and there was morning: one [or, the first] day. I've never thought of this holiday having any particular echo of creation in it, but evidently it does, or does now.
"First night / first light / a gift": lovely how the silent "g" in the first two lines now steps into the consonantal spotlight. The pairing of night and light could be the gift, or the light as a riposte to the night. R. Cohen says: "there is a crack, a crack in everything / that's how the light gets in."
"First light / a gift / to the": to what? to whom? Grammatical suspense hints at a pun: "to the" as "to thee."
"A gift / to the / shammes": Finkelstein's freeze-frame lineation reminds us that there is a light before the first light of Hannukah, an ohr kadmon, if you will: the light that lights the shammes, which then lights everything else. A poem about inspiration, then? R. Stevens: "We say, 'God and the imagination are one.' / How high that highest candle lights the dark." Every previous line has had two syllables divided into two words; this, two in one, as though that equation, that illumination, had been achieved. "Shammes" is an awkward word, a break from the diction of the first three lines, an interpolation from the Yiddish, and the Hebrew before that: a beadle, a sexton, a servant. On this night, and indeed all through the holiday, the servant gets the first, unnoticed gift. (When they sing "Bo'i b'shalom,' the back-benchers stand in front.)
"Shammes": in it we see "shame" transfigured ("Lo tevoshi velo tikalemi..." / "V'lo nevosh, v'lo nikalem..."--is that right? quoted from memory), also "sham" ("if the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise"). The poet here as servant alit, and able to pass on light.
More tomorrow, on stanza two. A present to you, Norman!
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Friday, December 08, 2006
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Davidic Verse
Working up my talk on King David, I compiled a handful of poems that mention or deploy him. I'll post them over the next few days, just to keep things moving along here before the late-December break.
Here's one by Charles Reznikoff. I love how he embeds a line of iambic pentameter in the free verse of the poem as a whole, precisely at the moment when David (or his equivalent, in this case) declines the weapons of King Saul. What a fresh, surprising figure for the (Jewish) (American) modern poet's relationship to (British) (Christian) prosodic tradition!
Here's one by Charles Reznikoff. I love how he embeds a line of iambic pentameter in the free verse of the poem as a whole, precisely at the moment when David (or his equivalent, in this case) declines the weapons of King Saul. What a fresh, surprising figure for the (Jewish) (American) modern poet's relationship to (British) (Christian) prosodic tradition!
from the sequence "Autobiography: New York"--Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down (1941)
X
I do not believe that David killed Goliath.
It must have been---
you will find the name in the list of David's captains.
But, whoever it was, he was no fool
when he took off the helmet
and put down the sword and the spear and the shield
and said, The weapons you have given me are good,
but they are not mine:
I will fight in my own way
with a couple of pebbles and a sling.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
He's Back!
My good friend Anonymous is back, with a new love note:
I still don't think this guy's entirely for real, but in any case, he's clearly been appointed my Patience Teacher for the next few weeks, and who am I to argue with such dedication to duty? I'll keep deleting his comments as soon as I spot them, and I'll stop boring you with my responses (probably), but let the record show that I appreciate his efforts. If I'm going to deal with anything Jewish, political or no, I'll have to deal with worse than this, so a little advance training will probably help.
Saith the Preacher (or in this case, the Poet):
By the way hymie kike I am a proud Sunni Muslim. You kaffirs are going to hell for not freeing Palestine. Inshallah.Well, you know--somehow I knew you weren't a Sufi!
I still don't think this guy's entirely for real, but in any case, he's clearly been appointed my Patience Teacher for the next few weeks, and who am I to argue with such dedication to duty? I'll keep deleting his comments as soon as I spot them, and I'll stop boring you with my responses (probably), but let the record show that I appreciate his efforts. If I'm going to deal with anything Jewish, political or no, I'll have to deal with worse than this, so a little advance training will probably help.
Saith the Preacher (or in this case, the Poet):
There was a king reigned in the East:Salaam Namaste!
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt
- I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.
Ran Across This
Ran across this today, by Jerry Rothenberg: the sixth of his Altar Pieces, from Seedlings & Other Poems. I love the poem; anyone know the work in question?
This Mary Magdalene
has hebrew on
her bodice
& a naughty smileAmsterdam 1993
Monday, December 04, 2006
King David Tomorrow!
I'll be speaking on King David and Jewish poetry tomorrow here in Chicago, at Congregation Rodfei Zedek on the South Side. I know an email announcing the talk just went out, with this blog address; for those of you just joining me, please excuse my testy post from yesterday. There's some history to it--not entirely happy, as you can imagine! I promise to be nice tomorrow night.
(Well, not too nice: we are talking about King David, my favorite bundle of contradictions. Whitman had nothing on David in the "containing multitudes" department.)
I have a fistful of relevant poems in hand, but if you read this and have suggestions--poems by Jewish poets that are either particularly Davidic, or that allude to David in some way--do send them along! I'm always looking for more.
Here's a favorite, rather wistful, by Yehuda Amichai:
Young David
After the first cheers
David returned to all the youths
and already the armored revelers
were so grown up.With slaps on the shoulder, with a hoarse laugh.
And someone cursed and others
spit. But David was lonely
and felt for the first time there were no more Davids.And suddenly he did not know where to put
Goliath's head that somehow he forgot
and still held by its locks.Heavy and superfluous it now was
and the birds of blood that wandered far
again heard not, like him, the people shouting.
Or, in another translation (from here):
After the outburst of the first few hails
Young David went back to the waiting boys.
Already those who clattered their hard mails
Were so disarmingly mature and poised.
They formed the usual shoulder-slapping queue.
Some swore, some spat, laughed hoarsely, even cheered.
But David stood Alone. Henceforth he knew
There could not be another David here.
And suddenly he wondered where to put
Goliath`s head that his numb hands were yet,
Through sheer inertness, holding by the curls.
Now it was heavy and superfluous, Birds
Who flew into the bloodshot distance heard
No longer, as he did, the shouts and snarls.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Registration for Comments?
A reader writes:
Still, just so he won't feel put out over having tracked his nemesis (or at least someone with the same name) over the waves of cyberspace, I'll take Reb Akbar's advice--unless you, cher Norman, object.
Until tomorrow, then:
Hey hymie kike remember to put in a registration feature so anonymous users can't post comments like mine go do that hymie kikeHmmm...I invite someone named Norman Finkelstein to join the blog, and the next thing I know, I get my first piece of anti-semitic commentary. My guess is that Mr. A. U. Akbar here is actually a member of my local Jewish Federation, maybe one of the folks who wants me to block that other Norman Finkelstein (whom I've neither met nor read) from getting tenure. Or maybe one of that other Norman's enemies from Colombia--the University, not the country.
ALLAH U AKBAR
Still, just so he won't feel put out over having tracked his nemesis (or at least someone with the same name) over the waves of cyberspace, I'll take Reb Akbar's advice--unless you, cher Norman, object.
Until tomorrow, then:
Friday, December 01, 2006
Daniel Fuchs
As I said in my first post the other day, I plan to address Jewish literary and cultural matters beyond poetry per se, so I observe with great pleasure that David R. Godine, having recently brought Charles Reznikoff back into print, is also reprinting the work of Daniel Fuchs. Fuchs (1909-1993), although highly praised by the likes of Alfred Kazin and John Updike, remains of the one most underread of Jewish American writers. Godine has just brought out what was previously known as The Williamsburg Trilogy under the title The Brooklyn Novels, with a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem. The three novels which make up this trilogy, Summer in Williamsburg (1934), Homage to Blenholt (1936), and Low Company (1937), present a panorama of post-immigration life in Jewish New York which in every way rivals Henry Roth's more famous Call It Sleep (1934). Like Roth's novel, Fuch's work was influenced by Joyce, especially the Joyce of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and the first of the three books in particular follows the development of a young man, the child of immigrants, who aspires to be the chronicler of his Brooklyn neighborhood while simultaneously freeing himself from its poverty and provinciality. But Fuchs is a much funnier writer than Roth, and his vision of the life of the streets, though certainly quite dark, is less tragic and more absurd. Roth vanished into obscurity, only to emerge at the end of his life and publish his multi-volume Mercy of a Rude Stream. Fuchs, by contrast, broke up his next novel into short stories, sold them to popular magazines, and headed out to Hollywood where he became a successful screenwriter (he won an Oscar for the screenplay of "Love Me or Leave Me"). Godine published The Golden West: Hollywood Stories last year; it includes Fuchs' last novel, West of the Rockies (1971).
There is a passage in Summer in Williamsburg which has always served as a touchstone for me in regard to the ways in which Jewish-American writers have negotiated the problems of assimilation and the loss of religious traditions under the social and cultural conditions of modernity. Replete with mock Yiddish and Hebrew, it is a lengthy description and ironic homage to
...these mysterious men in their black, shiny caftans, in their skull caps, these old men who come together in the evenings to play tick-tack-toe with the great Talmud, itself brought down miraculously through the centuries. In our time we must admire and respect this fervor, this tradition. They are true heroes in a world of puppets and therefore we do not understand them. These old men who find synagogues in a tenement basement store with the terrible toilets facing the back yards. These old men nodding over the yellow, holy-odored volumes, arguing in a straight line of tradition that extends over the world in width, in depth to the earliest times, in length to God himself. What dimensions, what awful dimensions, what wonderful men as they spit generously on the dirty floor.This passage deserves some Talmudic exegesis of its own. As Walter Benjamin might say, it is a perfect instance of cultural transmission as catastrophe. Fuch's comedy depends upon a disquieting blend of the familiar and the alien, of the heimish and the remote. Something Jewish is being passed from older to younger generation, and the means of transmission, as is traditional in Jewish culture, is the Book. But what is certainly not being passed on is Talmudic wisdom, but instead the bittersweet knowledge of its loss, as seen from the perspective of a young, Americanized generation, already a bit nostalgic for a way of life it knows very well yet cannot call its own. The text that is the vehicle of this experience is no longer the religious tome but the resolutely secular modern novel. The novel exposes the world of "synagogues in a tenement basement store with the terrible toilets facing the back yards." But in doing so, it reveals itself as one of the "puppets" of modernity, and if it is any way heroic, its heroism lies in its powers of self-deflation.
This is early Fuchs; later, that ironic power of self-deflation will become more completely Americanized. He migrates from Jewish college boys and old talmudists, to Jewish gangsters and pimps, to Jewish agents and producers. By the time he writes about the Hollywood studio system, he will move brilliantly between the registers of the cynic and the moralist, leaving the line of tradition he describes above almost completely behind. He never quite comes to see Hollywood in the apocalyptic terms one finds in West's The Day of the Locust. He was very much a part of the industry for a long time, but he could cast a cold eye upon it as a novelist, and, I think, as a secular Jew. Sometimes he seems to be dancing around the Golden Calf. But the next instant, he's smashing it to bits.
Greetings from Norman
Hello to all the readers of A Big Jewish Blog. I've been an avid reader of this blog since Eric started it, and as some of you may have noticed, I've put in my two cents from time to time. Now that I'm an official contributor (and hopefully others will join us soon), I'd like to thank Eric for starting the blog and running it faithfully. We've had some lively discussions in the past; let's keep the ball rolling!
Ideally, I would like to offer a relatively substantial post about twice a month, more often if things get lively. Like Eric, my sense of this blog is fairly broad. Our central interest is Jewish poetry, but I think we should also consider Jewish literature and culture in general, the relationship between poetry and Judaism, the relationship between poetry and "spirituality" (I distrust that term, but I've never found a good synonym), and the contemporary poetry scene. No doubt I'll have something to say about all these matters sooner or later. Stay tuned. My first real post will be arriving shortly.
Norman Finkelstein
Ideally, I would like to offer a relatively substantial post about twice a month, more often if things get lively. Like Eric, my sense of this blog is fairly broad. Our central interest is Jewish poetry, but I think we should also consider Jewish literature and culture in general, the relationship between poetry and Judaism, the relationship between poetry and "spirituality" (I distrust that term, but I've never found a good synonym), and the contemporary poetry scene. No doubt I'll have something to say about all these matters sooner or later. Stay tuned. My first real post will be arriving shortly.
Norman Finkelstein
Thursday, November 30, 2006
There'll Be Some Changes Made
Hello, everyone! As you'll see over to the right--if that's where it stays as I juggle the template--one of my favorite Jewish poets and scholars, Norman Finkelstein, has taken up my offer to join this blog as a contributor. More new voices may follow, either officially or through cross-posting, etc. I'd like to keep this blog afloat even as my own bark founders here in Chicago. (Well, that puts it too strongly--but I am swamped, more or less, by projects that are only tangential to this. Busy, busy!)
Now that my grades are in for the quarter, I hope to return to blogging, here and elsewhere. Norman will join in as soon as he can.
Finally, a note to A, who asked about my politics.
I hate to say this, but your email--a kind one, not at all angry or blustering--shut me down here for weeks. I may post more explicitly political material here in the future; in fact, I'm fairly sure of it. I don't want to start debates, Lord knows. (If you want to read something really depressing, take a gander at what passes for "debate" after an article in Ha'aretz or on Jewschool.) But I feel the need to say a few things, and if they bear on Jewish poetry, identity, or my so-called Jewish life, this does seem the place to say them.
Until tomorrow, then!
Now that my grades are in for the quarter, I hope to return to blogging, here and elsewhere. Norman will join in as soon as he can.
Finally, a note to A, who asked about my politics.
I hate to say this, but your email--a kind one, not at all angry or blustering--shut me down here for weeks. I may post more explicitly political material here in the future; in fact, I'm fairly sure of it. I don't want to start debates, Lord knows. (If you want to read something really depressing, take a gander at what passes for "debate" after an article in Ha'aretz or on Jewschool.) But I feel the need to say a few things, and if they bear on Jewish poetry, identity, or my so-called Jewish life, this does seem the place to say them.
Until tomorrow, then!
Monday, November 20, 2006
Rachel Zucker Blogging
I'm so swamped, so slow to write and read these days that I seem to have missed Rachel Zucker guest blogging at the Poetry Foundation. Go and read; she's a wonderful poet, and (it turns out) a moving, smart blogger as well.
Maybe I should make this a jointly written blog? Get some other folks too busy to sustain one of their own and work out a schedule for contributions? It works for Jewschool, which I read more or less religiously every morning.
Let me know!
E
Maybe I should make this a jointly written blog? Get some other folks too busy to sustain one of their own and work out a schedule for contributions? It works for Jewschool, which I read more or less religiously every morning.
Let me know!
E
Monday, November 13, 2006
News Worth Knowing
This from YNET, via the Poetry Foundation:
Poetry as a common languageSyrian poet recites Arabic translation of Hebrew poem at Spanish poetry festival
Had it been up to the poets, perhaps peace between Syria and Israel would have been established long ago. This was the obvious conclusion reached several days ago at the poetry festival held in Lleida, Spain. It was where Israeli poets Ronny Somek, the celebrated Syrian Lebanese poet Adonis and the Syrian poetess Maram al-Misri found a common language.Itamar Eichner
Published: 11.13.06, 12:50
Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, also known by the pseudonym Adonis or Adunis, is a Syrian-born poet and essayist who has made his career largely in Lebanon and France. He has written more than twenty books in his native Arabic.
At the age of 24 he fled to Lebanon after being arrested for nationalist political activity. In Lebanon he abandoned his nationalist ideas and in 1974 immigrated to Paris.
Adonis is considered to be one of the greatest Arab poets of all times and was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature. He is a friend of the Israeli poet Natan Zach and the two have published a joint work together. Adonis' work was published in Hebrew in Israel in 1989, and Ronny Somek wrote a poem entitled "Shalom, to Adonis the King," which was added to the preface.
Immediate chemistry
Somek, who came to Barcelona for the publication of his book "Pirate Love," arrived at the festival in Lleida and met Adonis for the first time. The two hit it off right away. "We spoke in Arabic, and it seemed as though the world was free of war," Somek said Sunday.
With regards to the Syrian poetess, Somek said Maram al-Misri told him that it had been difficult for her to write a poem following the recent war in Lebanon." Somek is now looking for an opportunity to invite Adonis to visit Israel.
The next day the two poets appeared in a panel discussing the status of poets' worldwide. The presenter asked each of them to recite one of their poems. Somek recited a poem, but beforehand he handed Adonis and al-Misri a translation into Arabic of his poem "Algiers."
When Adonis' turn came, the audience was amazed when he told them that instead of reciting his own poem he would recite the translation of Somek's poem. The audiences applauded loudly in appreciation of the gesture.
"It was one of the most moving moments of my career," said Somek "I shivered all over, the Spanish press made a big thing of it the next day," he added.
Keep up the good work, the three of you. The eyes of Texas may not be upon you, but the eyes of the blogosphere are.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Stop Reading. Go Vote.
Found this this morning, on Jewschool:
As I contemplate tomorrow’s elections, I keep thinking about a piece of text at the end of the third chapter of Masechet Sukkah, the tractate of Talmud that deals with the holiday of Sukkot. The chapter closes with a listing of bad omens for the Jewish community and an enumeration of the human actions that the rabbis believed caused these negative portents. Part of the text reads:Makes sense to me. If it doesn't to you, consider this, from Martin Espada:ובשביל ד’ דברים נכסי בעלי בתים נמסרין למלכות
ועל שהיה ספק בידם למחות ולא מיחAnd because of four things the wealth of the laypeople (literally “the home owners”) will pass into the hands of the government….
[Reason #3 is:] Because of those who have the ability to protest and don’t.”Rashi interprets reason #3 as a rabbinic statement on social activism. He explains that the phrase “ba’al habatim” (which I’ve translated here as “laypeople,” but which can also mean “those who work for a living” or any number of similar things) refers to those who are wealthy. Because of their affluence, says Rashi, wealthy individuals have the ability to protest against those who commit moral and legal transgressions in society. Others, he continues, will listen to what these people have to say because of their social position. Should the ba’al habatim fail to protest, their wealth will pass into the hands of the government– clearly an ominous outcome in the eyes of the rabbis.
These days, democratic elections are one of the most powerful methods we have to protest against what we view as social transgressions. And is there anyone among us who isn’t wealthy in some way, whether in terms of friends, freedoms, good fortune, money, or the ability to influence at least an immediate circle of family and friends? As Jews who may be wealthy in either conventional or unconventional ways, we need to vote. The Talmud reminds us that if we don’t– if we fail to protest injustice when we hold that power in our hands— our wealth (our freedoms, our dignity) will pass into the hands of others who have the power to oppress us.
Sheep HaikuGo Vote.
--Achill Island, Ireland
A lone sheep cries out:
There are more of us than them!
The flock keeps grazing.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Hot Fun in the Summer Time
Welcome to November, everyone! And if it's November, that means it's time for the NEH to announce their upcoming round of Summer Seminars and Institutes. Some of these are for college faculty; you can find that full list here, y si usted habla espanol, let me draw your attention to this:
Jewish Buenos Aires
(In Spanish)
July 9-July 27, 2007 (3 weeks)
David William Foster
Department of Languages and Literatures
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-0202
480/965-3752
david.foster@asu.edu
(Seminar Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina)
For my purposes, the crucial list is here: the seminars and institutes for K-12 Teachers. Each runs from two to six weeks; for each you get paid a stipend of $1,800 (2 weeks), $2,400 (3 weeks), $3,000 (4 weeks), $3,600 (5 weeks), or $4,200 (6 weeks) to cover transportation, living expenses, and so on.
This year, the NEH will sponsor two, yes two seminars for teachers of poetry! The first will be at Harvard, taught by Helen Vendler:
Keep in mind that you can only apply to one (1) of these two seminars; the NEH has a firm rule about that, and I have seen good teachers barred from participation for a year because they broke it. So write to both addresses for information, decide which city, which length of program, and which content better suits you, and then get busy with your application!
Jewish Buenos Aires
(In Spanish)
July 9-July 27, 2007 (3 weeks)
David William Foster
Department of Languages and Literatures
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-0202
480/965-3752
david.foster@asu.edu
(Seminar Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina)
For my purposes, the crucial list is here: the seminars and institutes for K-12 Teachers. Each runs from two to six weeks; for each you get paid a stipend of $1,800 (2 weeks), $2,400 (3 weeks), $3,000 (4 weeks), $3,600 (5 weeks), or $4,200 (6 weeks) to cover transportation, living expenses, and so on.
This year, the NEH will sponsor two, yes two seminars for teachers of poetry! The first will be at Harvard, taught by Helen Vendler:
Poetry as a Form of Life, Life as a Form of Poetry
July 2-July 20, 2007 (3 weeks)
Helen Vendler
Harvard University
Information: William Holinger
Harvard Summer School
51 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-998-8515
william_holinger@harvard.edu
Say Something Wonderful: Teaching the Pleasures of Poetry
June 25-July 27, 2007 (5 weeks)
Eric Murphy Selinger
Department of English
DePaul University
802 West Belden Ave.
Chicago, IL 60614
773/325-4475
aperson@depaul.edu
Keep in mind that you can only apply to one (1) of these two seminars; the NEH has a firm rule about that, and I have seen good teachers barred from participation for a year because they broke it. So write to both addresses for information, decide which city, which length of program, and which content better suits you, and then get busy with your application!
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