Two things just brought this new collection to my attention. Our friend the poet Adam David Miller came by with a review of it, and two of the poets, Rose Black and Melanie Meyer, let us know that the first San Francisco reading from it will take place next Tuesday evening, February 22nd, at Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco (details here).
“Five Bay Area writers, Rose Black, Margaret Kaufman, Melanie Maier, Susan Terris, and Sim Warkov, all published poets, invited five additional published poets, Dan Bellm, Chana Bloch, Rafaella Del Bourgo, Jackie Kudler, and Murray Silverstein, to contribute to this collection of poems of Jewish identity.”
Chapter & Verse: Some notes and observations
By Adam David Miller
When Rose Black handed me a promo sheet for Chapter&Verse I read “Five Bay Area…poets, invited five additional…poets…to contribute to this collection…,” I wondered what manner of work was this. With the thin-skinned, fragile, ego-driven, fractious nature of many poets I wondered how they even got the book together.
I need not have wondered. From Ethan Kaplan’s cover photograph of “Stained-glass window from Congregation Emanu-El, San Francisco…”; to Tania Baban-Natal’s tasteful cover and book design (in this case “You can tell a book…) with two apt blurbs; to Jane Miller’s (“a well known American poet) thoughtful and inviting Introduction, Chapter &Verse is an anthology readers will immerse themselves in, learn from, cry and laugh with the poets who do cry and laugh at themselves. In plain speech, this is one helluva fine collection.
I appreciate the testimonials of the poets that precede their bios in the Contributor’s Notes. These acts of witness as well as the poems helped me see the many ways there are of claiming Jewish identity. Examples of a few will illustrate: Jacqueline Kudler, “My Jewish identity, like my female identity, has never been a subject that much concerned me: it just is.” Raffaella Del Bourgo, “I came out of the nest an atheist and nothing in my upbringing or environment ever changed my mind about that, but I always felt 100% Jewish.” Rose Black, “I began with the deep split between my mother’s strong Jewish roots and my father’s strong Catholic ones, with their alienation from their own religions and their own families, with the pain and loss that was always spilling out, in spite of their attempts to hide it.” Dan Bellm, I came to Judaism by choice in my late twenties; entered the mikveh as a convert at the age of thirty-six; and became a bar mitzvah in my jubilee (fiftieth) year.”
Jews come from a myriad of places throughout the world and share such complex histories that it is not surprising that many feel ambivalent about their identity as Jews. Chana Bloch says, “My own poetry has increasingly found its way to the time-honored Jewish practice of arguing with the tradition. At seventy I am still asking; the answers keep changing.” As they should be as life changes and with change different circumstance. Read Chapter & Verse and see for yourself how these ten accomplished poets shake the tree.
Adam David Miller is an author, poet and lecturer. We published a wonderful excerpt from his memoir Ticket to Exile on Tikkun Daily a year ago. His new poetry collection is The Sky Is A Page.