{"id":277,"date":"2014-09-29T01:14:48","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T05:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=277"},"modified":"2014-09-29T01:14:48","modified_gmt":"2014-09-29T05:14:48","slug":"review-of-the-bloomsbury-anthology-of-contemporary-jewish-american-poetry-edited-by-deborah-ager-and-m-e-silverman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=277","title":{"rendered":"Review of The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, edited by Deborah Ager and M.E. Silverman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Aiger<\/a>Deborah Ager and M.E. Silverman, eds. The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. <\/em>Bloomsbury, 2013. 329 pgs. $29.95<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

In their introduction to The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry<\/em>, editors Deborah Ager and M.E. Silverman suggest that the parameters of inclusion in this anthology are broad. They implicitly define \u201ccontemporary\u201d to include poets born after 1945, that is post World War II, an obviously defining moment in Jewish and Jewish American history. Although I can easily think of a few influential Jewish American poets whose ages make them ineligible for this collection, a cut-off date of 1945 nevertheless means that most living poets could be represented. Similarly, the editors define \u201cJewish\u201d as an ethnic category that subsumes the religious category also known as \u201cJewish.\u201d That is, religious observance isn\u2019t a requirement for the poet, nor is a religious theme a requirement for the poems\u2014although many of the poems do take Jewish ritual, belief, and practice as their topics.<\/p>\n

The anthology includes the work of well over 100 poets, that number in itself testimony to its inclusive nature, most poets represented by 1-3 poems. Contributors range from household names (at least in poetic households)\u2014David Lehman, Charles Bernstein, Liz Rosenberg, Edward Hirsch\u2014through mid-career poets\u2014Susan Rich, Arielle Greenberg, Ruth L. Schwartz\u2014to poets who haven\u2019t yet published their first collection\u2014Sandra Cohen Margulius, Rachel Trousdale, Onna Solomon. Such an array of poets is among the anthology\u2019s strengths, although it also of course makes the task of reviewing more difficult. Before I\u2019d read even 100 pages, I felt overwhelmed, for I\u2019d already paused over so many good poems, and I\u2019d already noted at least a dozen titles by the contributors that I should check out. So I\u2019ll just admit here that the poems I will discuss represent a tiny percentage of those I could discuss.<\/p>\n

\u201cRelax\u201d by Ellen Bass is filled with humor and good advice. We needn\u2019t worry about the future, the poem implies, because it\u2019s bound to be filled with misfortune. Here are the opening lines:<\/p>\n

Bad things are going to happen.
\nYour tomatoes will grow a fungus
\nand your cat will get run over.
\nSomeone will leave the bag with the ice cream
\nmelting in the car and throw
\nyour blue cashmere sweater in the drier.
\nYour husband will sleep
\nwith a girl your daughter\u2019s age, her breasts spilling
\nout of her blouse. Or your wife
\nwill remember she\u2019s a lesbian
\nand leave you for the woman next door\u2026<\/p>\n

The juxtaposition of the elements in this list suggest that we grieve the significant and insignificant alike, that we cling to the mundane, that we will each likely experience some calamity we\u2019d not even thought to be concerned about. This list is effective because the elements are both precise and universal. But all is not lost, even when all is lost. Here\u2019s the last third of the poem:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
\nWhen she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
\nand climbs half way down. But there\u2019s also a tiger below.
\nAnd two mice\u2014one white, one black\u2014scurry out
\nand begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
\nshe notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
\nShe looks up, down, at the mice.
\nThen she eats the strawberry.
\nSo here\u2019s the view, the breeze, the pulse
\nin your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you\u2019ll get fat,
\nslip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
\nand crack your hip. You\u2019ll be lonely.
\nOh taste how sweet and tart
\nthe red juice is, how the tiny seeds
\ncrunch between your teeth.<\/p>\n

The taste and scent and texture of a single strawberry makes all of the other disasters worth it. The poem develops through the accumulation of detail, and seems to be primarily a clever list that will easily persuade us to continue reading\u2014though perhaps not bear up to rereading if it remains simply a clever list. The Buddhist story seems initially to comment on the speaker\u2019s worries\u2014life may be bad, but it could always get worse. But the poem turns here, not toward further tragedy but toward pleasure. And the turn leads to the most overt Jewish reference in the poem: \u201cOh taste.\u201d \u201cAnd see,\u201d we might want to say, \u201chow good the Lord is,\u201d completing the line from psalm 34. The allusion is more oblique than many, but the imagery enacts the lesson from the psalm, three lines developing an image that appeals to nearly every human sense, as if (think of it!) sensual pleasure is what we are made for.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Children\u2019s Memorial at Yad Vashern\u201d by Philip Schultz is much more serious, its solemn tone a response to its solemn subject. Observing a group of photographs, the speaker imagines what knowledge these children have acquired: \u201cThey understand they are no longer children, \/ that death is redundant, and mundane.\u201d The speaker questions God, and the children question God, that divine being who this time does not intervene in history. The poem concludes with lines that straddle resignation and acceptance:<\/p>\n

We look at their faces and their faces look at us.
\nThey know we are pious.
\nThey know we grieve.
\nBut they also know we will soon leave.
\nWe are not their mothers and fathers,
\nwho also could not save them.<\/p>\n

The line breaks here follow the structure of the sentences, and the sentence structure is equally straightforward, each one beginning subject-verb. The tone\u2014objective, neutral\u2014permits the horror of the event to be made manifest.<\/p>\n

The editors of this anthology have done an extraordinarily good job in representing the diversity of American Jewish poetry. It is diverse not only in the ways they state in their introduction, but it\u2019s also stylistically diverse, so it avoids the monotony of some anthologies wherein the poets are too aesthetically similar. Yet regardless of style, the poems are consistently energetic and engaging. It\u2019s a collection I want to return to, though I hesitate, because it\u2019s also a collection that encourages me to seek out further work by so many of these contributors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deborah Ager and M.E. Silverman, eds. The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. Bloomsbury, 2013. 329 pgs. $29.95 Reviewed by Lynn Domina In their introduction to The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, editors Deborah Ager and M.E. Silverman suggest that the parameters of inclusion in this anthology are broad. They implicitly define […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}