Recent Releases Worth Sharing
It’s been a busy month of poetry readings and getting the second issue of the journal out, but I am determined, on this last day of October, to share with you some recent releases that I think are well worth your time. Below you will find information on new books by poets Ruth Kessler, Eve Grubin, Nina Kossman, and Evan Schultz. It’s a long post, but our community is fortunate to have so many great poets who deserve attention and support.
Ruth Kessler’s book Country of Elsewheres, published in September by Broadstone Press, was ten years in the making and well worth the wait. The collection of poems focuses on “place and displacement, exile and belonging.”
In her review, Cecilia Woloch writes, “Ruth Traubner Kessler writes from a state of continual exile, as an immigrant and a traveler – across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Central America – a worldly poet who writes from the liminal space between worlds, from deep within the layers of time and memory, from a place neither here nor there, but always elsewhere – which is to say everywhere – and she invites her readers to journey with her. “Exile is an uncomfortable situation,” Helene Cixous wrote, “It is also a magical situation.” Kessler shares with us this magic.”
Ruth Traubner Kessler is an Israeli-American poet born in Poland. In addition to her recent release, she is the author of two chapbooks and has over 80 poems published in many journals and anthologies. Ruth is the recipient of multiple grants and awards, including Yaddo and MacDowell fellowships and an NYFA award. You can learn more about her on her website.
Below is an excerpt from a poem in the book.
Milk
(Bielsko-Biała, Poland)
I was that child
born of darkness,
standing in front of the huge iron stove
in the shared kitchen,
waiting—
Outside:
charred silence.
A gray city still licking its War wounds
near that horror-smoldering, unspeakable name—
standing in front of the mammoth stove,
watching closely a chipped blue enamel pot
next to Mother in her woolen,
or flowery, dress
waiting—
for that calm round whiteness
to curdle and crust
like a breeze-caressed, then
wind-crinkled lake, or
the face of the peasant who
delivered the still-warm cans
every day before sunrise;
You can support Ruth by buying her book on the Broadstone Press website. Additionally, the Jewish Poets Collective was fortunate enough to publish one of her poems and host her as part of a group of poets who read for the Jewish American Heritage month poetry readings. Her poem can be read here.
Ruth Kessler
Eve Grubin’s latest book of poetry, Boat of Letters, was released just last month by publisher Four Way Books. Edward Hirsch writes of the collection, “Eve Grubin seeks wisdom in the ancient Jewish texts as she navigates life as an American in England, a woman caught in the middle of life—a grieving daughter who has lost her mother, a wife and mother of two sons, a worrier, a reader, a dreamer drinking up the quirks of language. Above all, she is a contemporary seeker, and Boat of Letters is a marvelous book of observations, invocations, and prayers.”
Eve is a poet and teacher who grew up in New York City and currently lives with her husband and children in London. Eve’s poems have been published extensively, and Boat of Letters is her fourth book. Eve earned her PhD in the poetics of reticence from Kingston University, London. You can learn more about her on her website.
Here is a poem from her beautiful collection.
Poetics of Reticence
There is no vessel; there are no oars.
Silence is praise: words cannot touch glory.
She moves him with emptiness
between fingers.
No sounds of a boat creaking.
The night listens.
Empty waters.
Stillness in the dark’s keep.
“Not by force, not by might, but by my spirit.”
No stars, no wind.
The dark is clean, unspeaking.
Nothing seen.
You can support Eve by attending of her readings or classes, the information is found on her website, and by purchasing her book on the Jewish Poets Collective affiliate page on Bookshop.org or the Four Way Books website.
I’m happy to share that Eve will be the featured reader for the Rosh Chodesh Open Mic event for the month of Tevet (December).
Eve Grubin
Nina Kossman is a poet, author and artist, originally from the former USSR and currently living in New York. Nina’s book, Gods of Unfinished Business was recently released by Cervena Barva Press.
In his foreword to the book, the poet Ilya Kaminsky writes, “What is Nina Kossman’s God, and what kind of Unfinished Business are we about to get into, I wondered, opening this book of poems. “History Transformed into Myth,” the subtitle at the front of these pages warned, and I wondered what is history if not already a myth. That’s what I thought, getting started, yes–right before I learned that Kossman sent me these poems from a warzone, literally: the poet’s e-mail said she was in the occupied Ukraine at that time. And just like that, the mythological history, whatever that is, became a documentary fact. Facts take an interesting role in this collection of poems, actually: we begin with an echo of an ancient Akkadian text also taking place in a warzone, though of a very different kind. And, indeed, the myth comes forth. Or, rather, the myth is denied us (“What Ismul’s soul learned in the city of souls is never revealed”) only to be revealed as the pages turn…”
You can support Nina by purchasing her book on JPC’s affiliate page on Bookshop.org and on Amazon.
Nina has received grants from the Onassis Foundation, the Foundation for Hellenic Culture, a NEA fellowship, and the UNESCO/PEN Short Story Award. She lives in New York where she edits EastWest Literary Forum, a bilingual literary journal. You can learn more about Nina on her website.
Below is a sample of Nina’s poetry, published by Eratio Postmodern Poetry
MY OLD BELIEFS
When I was five, I believed in Communism.
When I was eleven, I believed in Zionism.
When I was nineteen, I believed a man.
When I was twenty-three, I believed in death.
When I was thirty, I believed in myself.
When I was thirty-nine, I believed in time.
Disillusioned with all of them,
I believe in something else now,
I won’t tell you what.
Nina Kossman
Rabbi Evan Schultz‘s second book, A Candle Unconsumed was published just days ago by Vayinafash Press. A Candle Unconsumed “is a work that, according to foreword contributor Sarah Tuttle-Singer, ‘meets you where you are and gently, insistently, lifts your face toward something extraordinary, something eternal.’”
The book features “over 100 poems on the themes of love, ancestors, sabbath, Torah, pain, Israel, hope, oneness, spirit, identity, God, and desire.”
Rabbi Schultz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation B’nai Israel in Bridgeport, CT. His writings have been featured on Kveller.com and thewisdomdaily.com, as well as in such publications as Times of Israel. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Jenny, and their three children.
You can support Rabbi Schultz by purchasing his latest collection on the JPC Affiliate page, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.
Evan Schultz
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