{"id":473,"date":"2017-06-11T16:41:41","date_gmt":"2017-06-11T20:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=473"},"modified":"2017-06-11T16:41:41","modified_gmt":"2017-06-11T20:41:41","slug":"review-of-two-worlds-exist-by-yehoshua-november","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=473","title":{"rendered":"Review of Two Worlds Exist by Yehoshua November"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Yehoshua November. Two Worlds Exist. <\/em>Orison Books, 2016. 76 pgs. $16.00.<\/p>\n

Yehoshua November\u2019s second collection, Two Worlds Exist, <\/em>resembles his first, God\u2019s Optimism, <\/em>in terms of the ease with which the life of faith is integrated with the life of poetry. As we move further into the twenty-first century, religious belief has both declined substantially and continues to be contentious. Poetry\u2014or any literary writing\u2014which takes faith seriously must confront two temptations, to ignore the secular world and become pietistic, or to prioritize the secular world and become defensive. Neither of these stances is good for literature, and fortunately, November evades them both. He writes of his faith tradition as naturally as he writes of his children, his ancestry, his teaching.<\/p>\n

Several of the poems address November\u2019s young daughter\u2019s hearing loss. He grieves that circumstance with the desperation common to parents who wish only to protect their children. He contextualizes the poems describing that experience by writing about one of his father\u2019s more extreme parental losses in \u201cConjoined Twins.\u201d November\u2019s father was a physician whose wife had just delivered stillborn conjoined twins, \u201cTwo bodies \/ and one heart.\u201d Other physicians plan to use the bodies of these infants as an opportunity for teaching, so<\/p>\n

Early the next morning, another Jewish resident
\nstood over the bodies with my father,
\nperformed the ritual circumcisions in the silence
\nof an unoccupied delivery room.
\n\u201cChoose names you would not otherwise use,\u201d
\nthe rabbi had instructed on the phone.<\/p>\n

What should have been a joyous occasions has become somber, one whose meaning is unclear, even to the faithful and scientifically trained father. The rabbi drives the father from his faith with the age-old suggestion that evil visits those who lack sufficient faith. The poem, though suggests a different interpretation, one which situates these boys imagistically within their tradition:<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked quickly
\nand saw them embracing,\u201d
\nmy mother later said
\nof the two boys, who were to be born
\nbetween Purim and Passover.<\/p>\n

One was named Mordechai,
\nwho gathered all the Jews
\nwhen they thought they had been forsaken.
\nAnd one was named Pesach,
\nthe holiday when all Jews,
\neven idol worshippers,
\nwere freed,
\nas long as they desired to go.<\/p>\n

And they left their bondage
\nand arrived at the mountain
\nwhere, the Midrash states,
\nthey camped in the desert
\nlike one man
\nwith one heart.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

A poet\u2019s interpretation of events does not rest in explanation but in description, in representation, in the image. Poets gather meaning from the concrete, as November does here. He may not have been able to satisfy his father\u2019s desire to know why any more fully than the rabbi had, but he is able to use his poet\u2019s attention to interpret the event very differently, placing the boys within the very foundation of Jewish tradition, the freedom marked by Passover.<\/p>\n

Other poems are more joyous. November includes several that recall his first sighting of and experience falling in love with his wife. In these poems, he recognizes the sacredness of marriage, of one soul\u2019s longing for another, but he also recognizes that body and soul are complementary, each allowing the other insight into our human existence. In \u201cThe Life of Body and Soul,\u201d November links his own life to Chassidic tradition and to scriptural interpretation. \u201cYaakov is the soul, and Aisav is the body,\u201d he says, and then recalls a recording he\u2019d heard years before:<\/p>\n

I heard a crackling silence,
\nand then an old rabbi said, The soul
\nis God\u2019s greatest opponent. It wants
\nalways to break free of the body,
\nleaving the world barren of holiness. <\/em><\/p>\n

In dualistic religious traditions that separate body from soul, interpreting them as opposing forces, we are so often taught that it is the body that craves, that carnal experience leads us to sin, that purity resides in the soul. So it is startling to read, as I imagine it was to hear, that the soul craves too, and that holiness enters creation through incarnation.<\/p>\n

After the reference to the world\u2019s barrenness above, November alludes to the story of Hannah praying for a son before turning to his own desire:<\/p>\n

And the laws of prayer mirror her prayer\u2014
\nher desire reflecting His desire
\nfor the life of souls in bodies.
\nAnd, sometimes, the mystics say, the body\u2019s desire
\nis really the soul calling out from underneath\u2014
\nYaakov reaching into the world
\nwith Aisav\u2019s hands
\nfor the lot the soul has descended to sanctify.
\nAnd always, that ascetic, the soul\u2019s high priest,
\nmistakes the body\u2019s desires for nothing more.
\nSo that when, for example, I saw you standing
\nat the soda machine in college, and my body was awoken,
\nthe high priest of my soul,
\nhaving just returned from a year in the Holy Land, said,
\nThis is just a young man\u2019s desire
\nfor a young woman with long dark hair.
\n<\/em>But in the body\u2019s version, there are five Jewish children
\nand our life together.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe body\u2019s version\u201d exceeds the body. \u201cA young man\u2019s desire,\u201d like Hannah\u2019s desire, reproduces God\u2019s desire for creation. I appreciate this poem for its insights, but also for its tone. As the poem explores its subject, observing body and soul from multiple angles, it produces its own insights. Its subject is revealed as the poem unfolds, as gratifying to the writer, I suspect, as to the reader. The best poets explore questions rather than provide definitive answers, and this is what November does here.<\/p>\n

Yehoshua November is an extraordinary poet whose books are worth waiting for, but I hope not to have to wait very long for the next one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yehoshua November. Two Worlds Exist. Orison Books, 2016. 76 pgs. $16.00. Yehoshua November\u2019s second collection, Two Worlds Exist, resembles his first, God\u2019s Optimism, in terms of the ease with which the life of faith is integrated with the life of poetry. As we move further into the twenty-first century, religious belief has both declined substantially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","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=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}