The Best American Poetry

Progression [Rachel Barenblat]

PROGRESSION

The house of Shammai suggested
lighting eight candles, then seven

and so on. Like coating our hearts
in rain that turns to ice.

But we know better.
We light smoky fires, deck the halls

with chopped-up credit cards
and cling to the increasing light.

---

My last poem during this stint of guest-blogging! I'm sorry the week is over, though I haven't maintained a poem-a-day schedule in a good long while; maybe it's a good thing I'm quitting while I'm ahead.

Hillel and Shammai headed the two famous houses of scholarship which manifest the twin poles of Jewish jurisprudence. Hillel's rulings tend to be more lenient; Shammai's, more stringent. The halakha generally follows the rulings of Hillel.

I'm glad of that, especially now, as we prepare to begin the festival of Chanukah tomorrow night. I love going from one tiny flame to the blaze of eight branches of light.

Happy holidays to you, dear readers!

[progression.mp3]

Seven reasons / Psalm 147 [Rachel Barenblat]

SEVEN REASONS (PSALM 147)

You rebuild your city with our hands
and gather our scattered sparks.
You darn the heels of our hearts
and comfort us with bandages.

You smear sunrise across the heavens
like raspberry jam
and coax every blade of grass
to emerge from the dark comfort of soil.
And you love our fragility
not our particle physics
nor the bridges we labored to plant
across the inlets your glaciers carved.

You lay down ice like glass
and frost like lace on our windowpanes
and then you breathe a January thaw
and our frozen places melt.

This creative rendering of psalm 147 owes much to zen abbot Norman Fischer's interpretive translations of psalms. Though I intentionally didn't look at his book before working on this poem, his work has had a profound impact on my approach to the psalms -- including this one, which is part of the daily liturgy. (I've written more about that at Velveteen Rabbi; you can read that analysis here if you're interested.)

[sevenreasons.mp3]

Psalm of assent [Rachel Barenblat]

PSALM OF ASSENT

When the electric company lifted us
out of persistent darkness
we were as in a dream. Slowly
the pub emptied of burly men
from West Virginia and from Maine.

Still, you reminded me
to light the lamp, then turn it down:
the shortest days are still to come
and the prodigal son is running late
leaving the work in our hands.

It is not incumbent upon us
to finish the text, but
neither are we free to refrain
from adding today's letters
quills scratching in the lamplit dark.

---

Line seven donated by Kate Abbott. Thanks, Kate!

If you can't see the embedded audio player at the top of the post, you're welcome to download psalmofassent.mp3.

In the dark [by Rachel Barenblat]

IN THE DARK (VAYESHEV)

The mysterious unnamed man
is always a messenger
sent to keep our story moving
in the right direction.

The appropriate answer
is always hineni, here I am
ready for whatever pitch
is up God's sleeve.

Into the pit, out of the pit
from slavery into service:
descent always contains
the seeds of ascent.

He had to be enslaved
in order to be accused
had to be accused
in order to be imprisoned

had to be imprisoned
in order to hear the dreams
of the cupbearer and the baker
which "surely God can interpret"

had to interpret dreams
in order to sire Freud
a few hundred generations
down the ancestral line.

But the cupbearer forgets
leaving Joseph in the dark
as the longest night of the year
threatens to swallow us whole.

---

Since last winter, I've been writing Torah poems -- poems which arise out of the weekly Torah portion -- and posting each week's poem to Velveteen Rabbi. (I plan to collect these into a manuscript; if you're a publisher who might dig a collection of midrashic poems, do let me know.) This week we're in the Torah portion called Vayeshev, the beginning of the "Joseph novella" -- one of my favorite sections of the Hebrew scriptures.

The Joseph story has everything: scheming brothers, prophetic dreams rife with poetic symbolism, mysterious strangers, descent into pits both literal and metaphoric. There's that multicolored tunic, famed in song and story (and symbolic in its own right: think of how clothing can disguise as well as reveal.) Plus there's the story of Judah and Tamar, an interlude which mirrors the Joseph story's themes of identity, disguise, and "descent in order to ascend," a classical Hasidic notion. And then there's Potiphar and his lecherous wife, and Joseph's imprisonment which sets the stage for his redemption, just as the eventual enslavement of the Israelites will set the stage for their -- our -- redemption writ large.

This year we're reading Vayeshev as the days tick down to the solstice, which gives the tale added poignancy. The days are getting darker, but a turn is coming which will hook our sonnet in a new direction.

Poem cross-posted, with different commentary, to Velveteen Rabbi.

View from the prow [by Rachel Barenblat]

VIEW FROM THE PROW

The borrowed baby clings one-armed
and drools pearls on my shoulder.

The hitch in his breathing slows
to a steady rhythm, though

whether it is slow as in before sleep
is unclear, my radar untrained.

The borrowed dog slumps to the floor
in front of the television, guarding

against the unexpected. These
are the voyages in my livingroom

the windswept house blazing
against the blanket of darkness.

The swing of the secular year
ticks toward stillness, the pause

before new momentum rushes us
into some unpredictable tidal pool.

And I know that if one valve were opened
which is meant to be closed, one

closed which is meant to be opened
I would not be able to stand here

awestruck by the burning gold
of the four-thirty setting sun.

---

Line 5 was donated by Ivy Alvarez, author of the gorgeous Mortal. Thanks, Ivy!

If you can't see the audio player embedded at the top of the post, you can download prow.mp3.

Crystal [by Rachel Barenblat]

Another ice storm poem. Because, as Jason Shinder (of blessed memory) used to say, "whatever gets in the way of the work is the work."

CRYSTAL

The ice forest rattles and rings
as though a large man were dancing
above the chandelier showroom
at the crystal import business
on South Flores in the old downtown.

That warehouse has been empty for years
but a trick of distance and the light
places my father at his desk again
unlit cigar on the cut-glass ashtray
waiting for his drive home.

What did they do in the old country
when ice limned every twig?
Maybe strolled on a Shabbat afternoon
storing images to reproduce
in hand-cut glass once the week began.

Cold air cuts through my clothes
and my back yard becomes Krasnopol
the lake on the outskirts glinting
cross-hatched by ice skates
like the goblets no one can afford.

*Line 7 donated by Teju Cole. Thanks, Teju.

"Sitting in the darkness waiting for something to burst" [by Rachel Barenblat]

Sitting in the darkness waiting for something to burst

is what the man is doing
whose boiler cracked
the day before the ice storm hit

who turned off the heat
just for overnight, replacement
already on the way

who lit the fireplace
and settled in, a camping trip
in his living room

until the roads disappeared
in a snarl of frozen wires
and swerving cars

the new furnace useless
until the source of power
restored light to the hills

so he sent his wife and baby
to eat curry and relax
at my comfortable house

and now he huddles
blanket-wrapped like a pioneer
hoping the pipes don't freeze.

---

Dear editors: thanks for inviting me back aboard!

The name of this poem is the definition of the Inupiaq word qarrtsiluni, which is in turn the name of a literary journal I quite admire. (Full disclosure: I guest-edited an issue a while back.)

If you can't see the embedded audio player at the top of the post, but would like to hear the poem aloud, you can download burst.mp3.

Preparing to Leave Jerusalem [by Rachel Barenblat]

I love the way the evening light
washes pink and gold across stone.
If I could freeze this moment in time,
would that ensure I wouldn't forget
the call of mourning doves, the sound
of muezzins, church bells ringing holy

as Friday shifts from profane to holy,
the streets streaked by dimming light
and from high apartments the sound
of blessing rings out across stone...?
Jerusalem, I don't want to forget
although I know I will, in time.

A seven week journey: not much time
to figure out what makes here holy.
(And as for the politics? Forget
understanding, honestly, in light
of the conflicting stories...) Stone
reflects voices, ripples of sound.

I want to believe my thinking is sound
but I second-guess myself from time
to time. Someone throws a stone
and we lose what it means to be holy.
Refugee camps are short on light and their inhabitants won't soon forget

as we, too, swore not to forget
glass breaking, scrolls burning, the sound
of wailing... But maybe the light
of this bright desert, the passage of time
can heal all of our wounds wholly
so we can finally drop the stone

of suffering we've carried. One stone
at a time, forgive but don't forget
this place, Eliade's axis mundi, is holy
no matter what languages sound
here at this moment in historical time.
This is meant to be a city of light.

Across the stone city, prayers sound.
I won't forget what I've harvested this time.
Holy One of Blessing, let me bring light.

-- Rachel Barenblat

Postcard # 2 [from Rachel Barenblat]

Postcard #2

The best view of Jerusalem
is from Tel Aviv, one hour
(a million light years) away

where in a day and a half
of ice cream and crafts fair
and sunset services at the port

I only saw one Orthodox guy
looking out-of-place
in his black and whites.

How could he wear color
in the wretched aftermath
of the Temple's destruction?

In Jerusalem that makes
a kind of sense, here where
the dust on the olive trees

might be a remnant of the holy stones
that dented the Roman street
where they fell, but

in Tel Aviv men wear Speedos
to play ping-pong on the beach
and my head swims because

suddenly I feel conservative
in my plain navy tank
and I realize how relative

"normal" has become, even
after a single month
in this city of gold.

-- Rachel Barenblat

Sestina Featuring Six Words Commonly Used On This Blog (by Rachel Barenblat)

SESTINA FEATURING SIX WORDS COMMONLY USED ON THIS BLOG

I certainly wouldn't claim to be the best
though I suppose no one could quibble with "American"...
Either way, I'm here to share adventures
from the Berkshires, post by post,
happy to be blogging here, a guest
of our esteemed editors, recently abroad.

In just three weeks, I too will be abroad,
combing the streets of Jerusalem to find the best
coffee and tabouli, staying as a guest
in the apartment of an extpatriate American.
I hope for easy wifi in order to post
about Hebrew, psalms, syntax, adventures.

Rabbinic school, it turns out, contains adventures
on many levels. Sometimes I go abroad
without ever leaving this familiar post
at my piano-shaped desk, the best
place I know for spotting common American
fauna: wild turkeys, the woodchuck that's a guest

beneath our yew. Old Norse gestr is the root of "guest,"
akin to "stranger, enemy" -- what adventures
in vernacular! Our hilltop house sprawls, American
style. Where I grew up, the skies were a broad
canvas for thunderclouds, but here what's best
is how the mountains cradle us, a post-

pastoral fantasy. In this post
I aim to be the picture of a grateful guest.
Can I entertain y'all? I'll do my best,
I want to own both sides: adventures
and roots, the binary collapsed. The broad
brushstrokes that describe "American."

I ponder the implications of this American
life. Writing poems (be they modern or post-)
roots me whether I'm home or abroad.
Who would have guessed
that temporary blogs, these ad ventures,
would yield so much worth reading? Here the best

American poets gather, host and guest,
stringing lights between the posts of our adventures.
Whether home or abroad, I wish you all the best!

-- Rachel Barenblat