Hello Poetry Lovers,

Reporting from NYC, a beautiful, tiny West Village synagogue, to be exact, called Congregation Darech Amuno, at 53 Charles Street.  We are the guests today of Voices Israel, the widely praised English language poetry anthology from Israel. Today is the public reading of the 2011 book, and I am here to listen, to read and to celebrate Jewish poetry.

One might inquire: What is "Jewish" poetry---for that matter, what is "Jewish" art? A question not easily answered, but then, being Jewish itself is a rather complicated matter, isn't it? We are a people, a culture, as well as a group that practices a certain religion (but in more than one way!). We can talk about a shared history, traditions, language, music and food, but as we all know there are plenty of differences within all of this. You can find a Silverman observing Kashruth and davening, while his cousin, also a Silverman, has embraced Jewish Humanism. One of them considers himself a South African, the other is a Yank living in Altoona. Both are Jewish and both are my own cousins.

But I digress.  Yet the point is that in the same way being Jewish embraces so much, defining Jewish poetry is also quite a complicated matter. It is fair to say that Jewish poetry is poetry that addresses anything that concerns any aspect of Jewishness, or anything at all that is written by a Jewish poet.

So I offer you the following poems, both of which were published in Israel, read before the NY audience, and most graciously received:

AIDA AND I

There is war outside

the bedroom window

not fireworks tonight, friends,

but proper artillery

booming through orchards

shaking window panes

while Aida is dying

in unacceptable decibels.

And I reason,

I am not leaving this room

even should sirens sound,

the purple blanket will be

my shroud

an appropriate color

to die in.

Wait for me, Aida.

Let's do this together.

                                  --Helen Bar-Lev (Jerusalem, Israel)

LEGEND 24

Allow death to come

to the body and its coarse hair.

We leave the husk behind,

the buckskin and its feathers.

Breasts soft as flowers.

But the heart is a boat,

a pod for float,

or moor, or weather.

Flowers, Flowers, Flowers.

                             --April Bulmer (Cambridge, Ontario, Canada)

Thanks for clicking in. 

                                                                  xo Judy

Hello Poetry Lovers,

 

For those of you who read this blog regularly, it will be no surprise to hear that much of Pittsburgh poetry in the summer happens at Hemingway's Cafe, on Forbes Ave. in Oakland. The Summer Reading Series has been around for years, run very well by impressario Jimmy Cvetic. In the last few years Jimmy has acquired a colleague, Joan Bauer, who has added her own dash of panache to the proceedings. Joan's idea has been to feature poets in groups of three or four, thereby affording the public the opportunity to hear a greater number of voices than heretofore, and it's worked very well--the more poets, the more poetry afficianados---audiences have grown in size.

Thanks Jimmy and Joan, for another wonderful season---which continues on Tuesday evenings at 8 pm through the month of July, the last one an extravaganza of a dozen or more poets on July 26---all free and open to the public.

Here is an exerpt from a poem by Jay Carson, poet and RMU professor, read last week at Hemingway's:

 

 

 

White Hot Justice

 

 

Everybody said my father

was a fine attorney

and he floated me through this childhood.

He worked hard to be mostly

fair with all of us, but left a sense

of the imperfection of  justice,

I suggest that what you think is

is equity is really the Lone Ranger.

... 

 

When she said, What do you want, honey?

her shock of strawberry hair

floating over those marmalade words,

I couldn’t tell her...

I was afraid,

more than the razor fight

downstairs; than the police

who had already threatened jail;

than the tales of brain-rotting syphilis.

But I thought and held up.

...

 

In a dream I wear a wig

the color of my ghostly skin

and pound a mahogany gavel.

I say unaccountably,

take her to my nursery.

My father stands up

from the jury box,

his eyes now perfectly sure,

Stop this endless show.

 

 

Wow---thanks to Dr. C, and to all of you, for clicking in. xo Judy