from Rachel Barenblat's 70 Faces:Torah Poems, here is
OFFERING (BO) We shall not know with what we are to worship the Lord until we arrive there. —Exodus 10:26 Maybe God wants goats scruffy and bleating. The richest colors we know. The taste of coffee, dark and smooth. Maybe God wants smoke from the trees our children will fell. The songs we sing when it's late and no one can hear. The Holy One will tell us what sacrifices are required, blood or water poured on the altar sluicing down to the earth below. Does God want our grief? Hopes raised, then dashed like pears against a rock. Maybe God wants us not to give up. We must bring all that we are so when that Voice speaks we can open our chests and pull out what's inside. For a closer view of our most recent book and the people behind it, you might like to listen to the podcast published last week by Dave Bonta at ViaNegativa. It's an interview/discussion with Rachel Barenblat (left) author of 70 Faces:Torah Poems, and me, Beth Adams, the book's editor and publisher (at right above). Dave is a great host, and the three of us had an excellent time talking about Rachel's new book, listening to and discussing some of her poems and the texts they respond to, and the often-difficult subjects they bring up and address.
We talked about the patriarchy and violence of the Bible and the problems modern people have relating to a God who supposedly ordered/allowed the wholesale destruction of groups of people, or the dispossession of their land, and how these scriptures relate to the current political situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories -- all subjects that Rachel takes on in her poetry, and are of great interest and concern to me because of my long-term marriage into an Arab-Armenian family. In fact, this sense of grappling with difficult issues and trying to build bridges is a big part of my purpose here at Phoenicia, and one of many reasons why I wanted to publish this book of Rachel's. At the end of the interview, the conversation turns to publishing and we talk about Phoenicia's first year, what we've learned from it, and our plans for the future. We thank Dave for his generosity in hosting this interview, and hope you'll enjoy it. Note: if you don't want to download the whole podcast, there's a "pause" button on the audio player window, and you can listen in sections if you wish - it will start up where you left off. From Clayton Michaels' Watermark: without edges These are the days that call for a bottle of Sonoma zinfandel, that beg for the black pepper, for the anise. Flavors that at least warm the mouth. I savor each sip for as long as I can, until the astringency makes my tongue feel like cotton. Snow again today, then rain, then snow. These are the days I need a woman without edges, without unexpected corners that could tear or scrape. She might taste like black pepper and anise, maybe sandalwood incense, or blackcurrant with a hint of cinnamon. All flavors to delight in and hold. We could ride out the gathering storms in bed, getting drunk, reading poetry. From a distance, the black type on the white paper looks like animal tracks on the freshly fallen snow. The Berkshire Eagle has just published an appreciative review of Rachel Barenblat's 70 Faces:Torah Poems by a writer of a different faith tradition, who says, in part:
"She has also taught me the depth and variety and compassion in the way she practices her faith. It is not the one I grew up with, but she and I think about faith in very much the same way, and reading Rachel's prayers and poems and open letters has shown me a faith that opens continually, that shuts no one out, and that insists on honesty, effort and care. " An excellent new review of Dave Bonta's Odes to Tools has just appeared on the blog of poet, theologian, creative writing professor and college administrator Kristin Berkey-Abbott, who gave several copies as gifts this Christmas. She writes: "It's a great book for those people on your list who see poetry as a hoity-toity exercise that rarely speaks to regular people. Bonta writes a poem for every almost every tool in the shed (unless you've got a really well-stocked shed). His poem "Ode to a Hoe" envisions the hoe as an agent of beginnings--not only the new garden, but also those worms that you chop in half. "Ode to a Measuring Tape" comforts me by asserting "In an old house like this, nothing is square." "Ode to a Shovel" uses the metaphor of stew and of dancing to make me see a shovel in a whole new light. "Ode to a Claw Hammer" ensures I will never see the hammer in the same way again, once I've read Bonta's description of the hammer as "the first / perfect androgyne," a creature that can "give birth to nails." His chapbook is wonderfully accessible, and I mean that in the most positive way. Even those of us who haven't used the tools will likely understand the poems." Starting this week: a series of blog posts containing excerpts from our titles, with occasional images. From Words of Power, this haunting poem by Dick Jones. You can hear it read aloud by the author by clicking on the link at the end of the poem. Mal Strange word, ‘stroke’ — a gentle sleep and then you wake up, changed. Caressed by infirmity on the brown hill, kissed by disability as you climb the long drive. The farmhouse tips and, heart in crescendo, you embrace the grass. Indifferent sheep manoeuvre, crowding out your sky. You lie in a lump, adrift at the field’s edge, floating on the dead raft of your limbs. The sun nails light into your one good eye. Near dusk her scarecrow voice scatters your crowding dreams: she calls you from the house, the sound of your name curling out of the past, a gull-cry, fierce, impatient, tearing at the membrane that has dimmed your world. Root-still, potato-eyed, you are another species now. Your medium is clay and saturation. Mummified, like the bog-man trapped by time, you lie dumbfounded, mud-bound and uncomprehending as the sun slips down behind the hill. The urgent fingers scavenging for a heartbeat, fluttering like bird-wings at your throat, are busy in the dark. You feel nothing of their loving panic, their distress. All love, all optimism, pain, all memory, desire coarsen, thicken into vegetable silence. A dim siren wobbles in the dark. And then rough hands manhandle your clod-heavy bulk. Night swallows the spinning light and closes in like smoke. Download the podcast Dick Jones writes, “Initially wooed by the First World War poets and then seduced by the Beats, I have been exploring the vast territories in between since the age of 15. Fitfully published in a variety of magazines throughout the years of rambling — Orbis, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Ireland Review, Qarrtsiluni, Westwords, Mipoesias, Three Candles, Other Poetry and others. Grand plans for the meisterwerk have been undermined constantly either by a Much Better Idea or a sort of Chekhovian inertia. We were happy to receive word recently that two of Phoenicia's books have been ordered as texts by professors for their college poetry classes. Clayton Michaels' "Watermark," will be taught and discussed in a poetry/creative writing class, and soon-to-be-published "70 faces: Torah Poems" by Rachel Barenblat, will be used in a class on Feminist Methodologies.
One of our goals at Phoenicia Publishing is to encourage greater use of contemporary, edge-pushing texts in poetry and writing education - students respond positively to these texts, they have few of the biases of older readers against unconventional publication methods - quite the contrary - and they are encouraged by works such as Clayton's and Rachel's toward greater freedom and experimentation in their own work and thinking. We've asked the teachers to share their experiences with us after the classes have read and discussed these books, and also to allow us to publish some of the student's work -- so there will be more on this topic here in the spring! |
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