One medicates the self with the nearest thing at hand. One does not wish to call attention to one’s dis-ease. Frailties are exploited by social carnivores. Even as an adolescent, I used writing as a balm, as a solace, as a poultice for what I came to know, fifteen years later, as chronic, seasonal depression. Eventually, and nurtured, this reaching for writing allowed me to develop as a poet. I remain in conflict with this annual six-months’ duration. Looking at my writing that treats depression directly, I am struck by two things: how little of it I’ve done; and how pervasive the roots are in almost everything else I attempt. When approaching depression directly, I have to acknowledge that this familiar infusion of mood is also one of my commonly productive modes.

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Here is a poem, retrieved from a place I inhabit often, and usually in private (my writing group deigns to go there only as a suffered punishment): sonnetville.

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I’ve battled back depression all my life.

He flanks and charges, spies, and sues for peace.

Should I agree, he then withdraws the lease.

He finds me in contempt and throws a knife.

We wrestle without rules. He takes delight

in foiling any fairness or appease.

And if I try to cease hostilities,

he lifts me off the ground and picks a fight.

But sometimes while I’m sharpening my tools,

he comes in guise of trusted confidante,

and soothes and coos and mentors me with care.

I trust him to infuse the very air.

I breathe for him, shape his words. I’m the runt

who works his mine, who digs and brings his jewels.

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Compare this with another poem, written on the occasion of the first birthday of my third child. It’s obviously shot through with depression, although I love all my children dearly.

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The baby’s year encased me like a rock.

A perfect quartz whose angles never showed,

it skewed my vision ‘til the summer snowed

and mornings came upon me like the dark.

Days there were when light came through like a talk

with friends and I could laugh and lose the load.

At other times the clocks unwound like roads,

while I moved like a boat without a dock.

By equinox the crystal cracked, and I

felt loosened, like a captive whale set free:

I pause before the rift--as if a lie

were clear--and pond’ring what the sea might be,

I reach for his extended arms and lift.

We hold each other and, together, drift.

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It’s a sort of a paean to the depressive state. I find it significant that the poem apostrophizes precisely the boundaries of my seasonal depression: equinox. Once when someone asked me what my winter state is like I responded: “It’s like having had a close friend die. But you can’t remember which one.”

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Many years ago I discovered light therapy. It works simply and reliably by exposure to full spectrum bright white light, early in the morning, to initialize one’s circadian clock. I also tried several SSRI medications for about nine years and finally gave them up (lovely side-effects) and returned to “my lights.” Does this completely remove the depression? No. But it goes a good ways toward making winters more bearable for me and for those people around me. For the rest I have poetry.

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Why or how does writing work as a treatment? Speculatively, I’d say it provides what my mind seeks in winter: attention to the self; a place for reflection; a therapeutic page-space. This doesn’t mean that I stop writing in summer. I have a correlative mania in summer that makes me a lot of fun to be around. And that summer person likes writing in the middle of the night every bit as much. The process of composing poems is also a process of composing the self. There is order, stabilization, perspective. That’s what I discovered as a depressed kid. And it nourishes and sustains me still.

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Thanks for Reading JWorld Café

David A. Epstein, Ph.D., Guest Blogger

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David A. Epstein, Ph.D. works as a house-spouse and a carpenter. He is a member of the Brickwalk poetry group in Connecticut, and is a board member of The Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens. He has published poems in Poetica, Poetic Hours, The Lyric, Blue Collar Review, and Shofar. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Please joing me in welcoming the poets featured on this, our second week of Open Forum here on JWorld Cafe. Next week we'll resume regular posts with our guest bloggers. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor.

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Ina G. Perlmuter

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Shiva for a Mother

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Words of encouragement

came from unexpected sources

They came to console me

They spoke of her inner beauty

how she had impacted on their lives

They mentioned her love of family

her steadfastness in commitment to others

The rabbi mentioned her exquisite care

and selflessness in caring for her parents

the respect she lavished on her husband

understanding the many roles

of her children and grandchildren

They were right, all of them

Yes, they all spoke the truth

part of what made saying good bye so painful

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Choices

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The office, mahogany majestic, with pomp and sense of medical history oozed with

Frank Lloyd Wrightian lines and musty leather bound chronicles of neurological surgical

artistry. Descriptions of handiwork by skilled medical wizards who collaborate in

God’s work. Repairers of brains but not their thoughts. Repairers of spinal injuries

short circuited in falls or punctured by man’s malicious inclinations.

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And there, in the exhausting silence which followed the prognosis by the surgeon,

a gentle man, and a giant in his field, came a blindingly clear whisper from the

elderly patient who had spoken hardly a word for months.

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She sat regally and suddenly words, her words filled the whole room.

Her words bringing a sudden rush of tears from the children who had accompanied

her to this consultation. “now please listen to me,” this bride of fifty seven

years haltingly articulated, “I have had the sweetest of marriage, a wonderful husband,

and I my children found their life’s partners,” and as tears burned rivulets

down her children’s cheeks and tears welled in the surgeons eyes she announced in

an oh so final tone, “I do not want this or any procedure done”.

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It could have and maybe should have rested there but it was our Father’s hope that

the proposed surgery would enhance our Mother’s life. It was this hope which made us

forget how wise Mother had always been. The illness of a parent has this tendency.

In consultation with us, our Father’s decision was to go ahead with the proposed

protocol.

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In the end we children saw no improvement. Our Father on the other hand

was more positive. He reassured us that making choices is never easy, one must

look at two equal options when making choices.

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On a positive note, our dear mother lived out her life in her own home with a husband

who still referred to her as his bride, her devoted children, grandchildren and great

grandchildren and two wonderful caregivers in the surroundings she cherished

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Like in Ramallah

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Elaine Rosenberg Miller

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In the dark, the guiltless, moonless night

They made their way along the walls of the modest house, along the stuccoed walls

Soundless, sightless

On they crept, swiftly, stopping to listen for restlessness, recognition, awareness, life

Soon to be dawn, soon to be day, they hurried on

Soon, blood, glistening blood, molten blood, then darkening blood, stiffening blood, streaking blood

As in Ramallah

In Ramallah, the young man raised his hands, palms up, his fingers splayed

On his hands, his scarlet hands, death

In Ramallah, in Ramallah, one man's blood painted another man's upraised hands

Blood!

Blood coursing through the body

To the heart, to the brain

Bringing warmth

The child fell back on his bed

A single thin mattress

He fell

And his blood pulsed onto the mattress

They slit the neck of the baby, the dewy folds offered no resistance

They killed the parents.

Young parents

And when they were done, they fled into the darkness, softly, softly, the ancient stones recoiling in horror under their feet

And when they returned to their children, their parents, their neighbors, the blood of the family was on their hands

Garments

Faces

Souls

Like in Ramallah

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My Broken Soul

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Jennifer Alderson

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My soul is fragmented just like

the jagged edges which are glass

the shards of universes streaked

with bleeding like a suicide’s

wrists near her own closed fisted palms

the holy vessels cutting in

like knives which piece the wick which would

bring forth the light God gives to us.

How can a suffering soul heal

and when will the Lord redeem us?

Do children suffer by the word

of the Lord above looking down

on those who pray, “If not now, when?”

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Father Narcissus: A Testimonial

The ego-less man acquires peace

it’s said in other religions;

and Martin Buber describes us

in relationships of blockage in

how we view others; absorbed in

the egocentric relationship

we fail to see the ‘other,’ with

their wants and needs made separate

from us by our own paradigms.

I learned all this to find that I

am immersed in self-absorption

with little real feel for the thoughts

of others, despite my wish to

know what their feelings are up close.

How do I experience the real—

not just in regards to God but

in other human beings, too?

My walk through life is tunneled as

though I was in a train traveling

through underneath a bridge with views

both frontal and then backwards, too,

but not to the sides as I look.

I am the Narcissus who looks

at himself but no one else and

hears only Echo calling him—

his own voice resonating back.

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the joys of being alive

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Jeff Goodman

the poet suggests that "we walk

on air

against your better judgment"

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and as the pressure of the

past was mounting and truth

be told, old age rapidly

.

advancing, chopping off one

hydra's head only for it to

sprout another two and so on

.

slowly but surely we saw ourselves

drawn to a light, elevated

towards greater heights

.

floating in air above cities and towns

barns and farms, soaring above

petty grievances and what had

.

seemed to be from below, threatening

strife. the stewardess offered peanuts

and orange juice

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"we're all out of tomato juice" she said

and just as the plane

was approaching Toscana

.

the "fasten your seat belt light" came on,

the pilot's voice came over the intercom:

"please be seated folks, we’re encountering -"

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"a little turbulence" was what he had meant to say,

but the end had

arrived; a giant purple - red fiery

.

fire sprouting dragon in the sky had

swallowed up the plane, it's stomach juices

almost drowning us all, in vile liquid

.

"wake up wake up" its time to wake

up, "put on your boots.

and be outside in three minutes."

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the red headed corporal was awakening

the troops, today was a Friday,

time to clean up the camp. 'fore going home

.

for Shabbat.

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Full Circle

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Frieda Landau

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His great grandfather arrived with little

English and less dollars to make a new life

At the sewing machine and the cutting table

Or the pushcarts which grumbled and groaned

On the cobblestones, never gliding gently.

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His grandfather escaped to the open spaces of

The Bronx and Brooklyn, to give his children

The life he never had, of leisure to learn

And forget the old tongue and the old ways

That were his secret shame when he was young.

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His lawyer father – Columbia and Yale law -

Moved to the manicured homes of Connecticut

And tried to pretend he was old money

Never hearing the laughter behind his back

At the upstart immigrant's grandson.

.

He returned to the old neighborhood

Where the once mean cold water walk up

Is now a flat with character - and elevators and hot water

Where his rent is more per month than his

Great grandfather ever dreamed of making in a year.

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The following two selections are collaborations between two poets, Avril Meallam and Shernaz Wadia, in which they pick a topic, each write a poem on it and then weave the poem together in what they’ve come to call Tapestry. They met virtually through one of the first weeks of Open Forum we had on Poetica two years ago.

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Beneath the waves

(by Shernaz)

Under the rippling surface off which,

glint moments of mundane existence

a deep stillness belies the agitation

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I dive into the tranquility, effortless,

seeking out from recondite beds

exquisite pearls of ancient wisdom

secreted by the oysters of experience

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sometimes I pry them open a tad too soon

at times I chance upon the rarest of gems.

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(by Avril)

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A deep, silent tranquility

obscured by a raging sea.

My own inner world

cradled from the storms around me.

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As I enter this space

and merge with the peace

of my innermost being

I connect to my Source

hidden beneath the waves.

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Beneath the waves

.

I sense a deep quietude

as dive into the tranquility

under the rippling surface

of the raging sea

of mundane existence

.

As I enter this space

the stillness that belies the agitation

cradles my inner world

from the storms around me

.

I seek out, from recondite beds

hidden beneath the waves,

exquisite pearls of ancient wisdom

secreted by oysters of experience

.

Sometimes I pry them open a tad too soon

but when I connect to my Source

I chance upon the rarest of gems

and merge with the peace

of my innermost being

.

When the gate opens

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(by Shernaz)

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Often overpowered

by neglected shadows of life,

I cower in dread…will they lead me

into dungeons unknown?

.

Can they?

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When you lift the latch

all my fears will drown

in the surging force

of Your kindly light

.

(by Avril)

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When the gate opens

will I be ready

to catch a glimpse of the Divine?

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Or will my eyes be looking backwards

glued to the familiar

that I perceive as the truth?

Unable to get out of my box

to flow with the tide of change

towards peace and harmony

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When The Gate Opens — Tapestry

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when You lift the latch

and the gate opens,

can I, overpowered

by the shadows of life,

be ready to catch

a glimpse of the Divine

.

would I cower

in dungeons unknown

look backwards in dread

unable to get out of my box

or

would my eyes lead me

to perceive the truth

drowning my fears

in Your kindly Light

as I flow

towards harmony and peace

in the surging tide of change

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Thanks for visiting JWorld Cafe, the Poetica Magazine Blog and reading the work of our Open Forum Poets - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

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Frieda Landau is a writer and a photographer, specializing in military topics. Landau was born during a postwar pogrom in Poland to Holocaust survivor parents. She writes poetry as a way to deal with her family history. Her work has appeared in Poetica Magazine and has been anthologized in Poetica’s Holocaust Anthology. Her website: http://www.freewebs.com/listgoddess/ . Her poetry collection, In the Shadow of the Shoah, will be published by Poetica Publishing in the fall of 2011.

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Ina Perlmuter is a wife, mother and grandmother who has published her poetry through ISPS and Poetica, and participated in a reading at the Brewed Awakening Coffee House in Westmont, Illinois. Work is forthcoming in the ISPS Anthology.

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Jeff Goodman lives in Yerucham, Israel with his wife and children. He is the Deputy legal advisor for Beer Sheva Municipality and writes a weekly column, “Elu Devarim” by email. He was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1957 and made aliyah with his family in 1969. From 1976 to 1979 he served in the Golani Brigade, following a volunteer year in Dimona. He attended Law School at Bar Ilan University, and further Jewish Studies in Jerusalem and Har Etzion.

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Jennifer Alderson is a writer and poet whose work has been published in Poetica Magazine and Mim'amakim. She is presently working on her book, The Bible According to Eve.

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Elaine Rosenberg Miller is an attorney in Palm Beach, FL. Her essays, memoirs, poems and short stories have appeared in many literary journals, including AllGenerations; Jewish Magazine; Lit Up Magazine; Miranda Literary Magazine; The Brooklyn Voice; The Forward; The Jewish Woman; The Writing Room Literary Anthology; Wilderness House Literary Review; Women and The Holocaust; Women In Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal (University of Toronto) and Writing Raw.

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Avril Meallem has had work published in journals in Israel and abroad including Voices, H2E, the Yated newspaper, The Doronda Review, Leaves in India and on the Poetica forum. She is a regular contributor in the “Your Space” section of Muse India literary e-journal and together with Shernaz has won two first prizes and two honorable mentions for their Tapestry poems in the monthly competitions. She is the author of a book of poetry, Dancing With The Wind and is presently working on a second collection. You may reach her at aemeallem@gmail.com.

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Shernaz Wadia is a retired teacher and homemaker living in Pune, India. Her poems have been published in e-journals such as boloji.com, Poets International (electronic and print), Pondering Moments, Poets India, Enchanting Verses International, kritya.in, MuseIndia, Autumn Leaves, Ribbons (a journal of Tanka), and anthologized in the book, Posy of Poesy. Her poem on Alzheimer’s has been selected for an anthology, Caring Moments, brought out by the website Life’s Inspirational Moments, Australia. She also writes on the blog writespace4iw.wordpress.com.

This is the time of the semester where my Composition students begin working on research papers. They're free to choose their own topics, which is both a blessing and a curse. For those who fall into the "cursed" aisle, I assign a topic. What sweet relief for them! Until that is, they can't find any material, can't muster the energy to explore another's idea, even when that idea was carefully selected as perfect for them. 

I feel their pain. I'm with them, right here, right now, trying to find the words to fulfill the assignment suggested by JWorld Cafe's editor. Loss and Creativity. It was at least a month ago when she asked if I wanted to write about the loss of my brother, Jack. My first instinct was to say, no, second was yes, then no, yes, no, yes, and finally I put the idea on a shelf, thinking I'd be ready. But is there such a thing as being ready to write (or talk or think) about a brother's death? My brother's death.

Before you think that I was a perfect sister, I have to say that the last years of our lives were fraught with conflict. We didn't speak much; when we did there was anger, intensity, yearning. How we yearned! Both of us, in our inadquate ways to remember a bond we'd had in childhood--not perfect--but still. We wanted to get that familiarity back but couldn't. Those gorgeous days when we shared comics and baseball cards (he taught me how to flip them), and did acrobatic feats where I stood on my big brother's knees and felt like I could fly. 

Back in the late '50s and '60s, before I could ever have dreamed I'd be a writer, Jack was accruing experiences I'd one day memorialize on the page. Picture him: Dark, brooding, smoldering unhappiness. Montgomery Clift? No, more James Dean, except my brother was a Rebel with a Cause. He spent his elementary school years railing against the yeshiva education my parents had insisted upon. As a girl, I was allowed to attend public school. We slept in rooms next door to one another's. But we lived different lives. My Saturdays were coed parties; his were shul with my father, until the Rebellion and then he davened at a pool hall in Flatbush.

I began writing about my brother's life and mine and the ways they intersected, many years ago. His unhapiness had eclipsed the joy I was able to find in the world. I buried my thunder, put out my light. I vowed to not embody my life, until Jack embodied his. My brother never knew it, but I raged at my parents and the damn yeshiva, too. How could he know it? I did it as I did everything. Quietly.

There was a sibling line I wouldn't cross, and so I didn't publish my work about Jack and myself. I found my writerly voice--or at least my publishable voice--writing about my parents, who were Holocaust survivors. My relationship with them--conflicted too--was my entree onto the pages of newspapers and magazines with a Jewish readership. It was the engine behind all my creative work. 

After my father died (my mother had passed eight years before), I needed to write; there were so many reasons. Mostly, I think, I needed to make sense of my parents' lives. And too, my enormous love for them that had often come out all twisted. Through words I righted us, tweaked us this way and that. 

Then, last summer my brother died. He had suffered from alcoholism, and his body gave out. All the mixed feelings that I had carried for half my life--they didn't make it to the page. The stories about the yeshiva and the pool hall--meaningless. I was in a place unimaginable, yet real. The last one of my family. The last. Free from trying to solve our conflicts, make us better. Bound in sorrow, knowing I can never make us better. And free, to let myself shine.

This would be a good time to take to the page. But, I can't get started. I tell my students, "Writing can help you figure yourself out."  I believe that; but for today, my grief unfinished, I want to fill myself on life not words.

I can write essays, articles, lesson plans. I can lose myself in many creative projects. But my most creative endeavor will be figuring out how--and allowing myself--to finally and fully embody my life.  

Thanks for Reading JWorld Cafe, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Sandra Hurtes, Guest Blogger

Sandra Hurtes' essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers and numerous other publications. She's the author of the essay collection On My Way To Someplace Else and the chapbook, RESCUE: A Memoir. She holds workshops in Manhattan in creative nonfiction and is an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College, CUNY. Her website is www.sandrahurtes.com.  - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor 

I was listening to Elizabeth Alexander being interviewed on NPR. Alexander was able to make statements about the places one goes in poems, and the sort of psychological necessities, the way poems give poets and readers and listeners a certain useful space to inhabit. It’s amazing that some people have the perspective, the experience, the wisdom to be able to offer such confident phrasings. My own perspective is more like lament. Lament for the time when poets were, in the Greek sense of the word, the makers of the world. When culture was transmitted orally, and the role of the poet was the one who intoned our history. I’m going to offer an interpretation of how poetry’s role and use has changed. And I’ll suggest the implications of those changes.

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Poets have, now, a diminished role. And yet, there are more people writing poems in the world today than at any time in history. How do I know that? Candidly, it’s a guess. I have heard a significant factoid (which is something one comes to know that doesn’t change one’s behavior): There are more slaves in the world today than at any previous time. It is believable in the sense that the earth’s population is larger than at any previous time. Percentage-wise, slavery may be much diminished on our planet. But in terms of raw numbers, it is evidently true that there are more people whose lives are wholly owned and controlled by other people than at any other time in human history. Contemplating this - really pondering the implications of this - is so vastly sad that one must do the inevitable shutting off. It’s a hard return to segue back to the burgeoning number of poets, but let’s do it: there are more venues, online and in print, than at any other time in human history. Poets seem to be so numerous that one cannot swing the proverbial cat without hitting one. I’ve lived and written in the same small city for the past decade, and still, the names of poets who read publicly are rarely familiar to me. Reading around in journals, in online journals, in Poetry, and link-hopping on poets’ websites bring me to the same conclusion: there are more people writing poems now than ever before.

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On one hand, poetry has ceased to obtain. On the other hand, why are so many people engaged in poetic writing? Could it be, as Elizabeth Alexander suggested, that poetry is a sort of backlash against a culture thriving so vitally (and vapidly) on rapid electronic information? I don’t know that it’s even necessary to make such a tie. I don’t think that one needs to justify the existence of poetry by saying it exists in reaction to some other aspects of human or literary culture. It’s enough to take poetry as an a priori desire or need. Dense, freighted, musical language is edifying.

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Clearly, the practice of poetry intrigues people in ways that suggests our primary relationship is with our selves, that self that then must encounter the world. Consider, then, that the locus of poetry has moved, but only slightly. In oral culture the words of the poet mediated between the individual and that individual’s understanding and reception of the community. Now poetry is just inside the skin: one doesn’t use poetry as a public tool to extrapolate about the world; one uses poetry to interpolate. I worry that the preponderance of poets may mean that people are more enslaved to a self. Ought we be more tied to others? Here, again, is the covenant: define your self by how you treat others.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

David Epstein, Guest Blogger

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David A. Epstein, Ph.D. works as a house-spouse and a carpenter. He is a member of the Brickwalk poetry group in Connecticut, and is a board member of The Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens. He has published poems in Poetica, Poetic Hours, The Lyric, Blue Collar Review, and Shofar. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

I’m one of those crazy people who love biblical Hebrew grammar. Maybe it’s because I’m a poet, maybe it’s because I love the lushness of Biblical Hebrew, or maybe I’m just crazy. But no matter, I am a total grammar geek. And to prove my complete geekiness, I’ve been known to read Biblical Hebrew grammar dictionaries – the Brown Driver Briggs (BDB) is my favorite. I open to a page at random and read the entries on that page. I’m fascinated by the words – their root letters and many meanings, their meanings in other Semitic languages (Akkadian, Ugaritic, etc), and how the grammatical structure of Hebrew can intensify or change the meaning of a word, and give nuance to the text. Biblical Hebrew is, to me, poetic and much of the tone, cadence, and rhythms of Tanach (Hebrew Bible) have made their way into my poems. Not only have I been affected by grammar, but biblical and Talmudic stories, as well as parts of the siddur (prayer book), have found their way into my work.

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Blessing

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I long for stones to put under my head,

to dream of a ladder that reaches

into the sky, where angels go up and down,

to know that God was in this place,

.

to take stones, and set them as a pillar, pour oil

on the top, wait to give name to

that place, wait for someone to call out

what they have found so I will know what I have lost.

.

I long, too, for fluidity, for rain to release me

from my vows, to give thanks for every drop,

to fill my mouth with song as the sea is with water,

and my tongue with praise as the roaring waves,

to be incandescent, iridescent, volatile.

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In the summer, my parents have a vegetable garden, and when I’m there, I like to work in the garden. And one morning in the garden, I got to thinking about just how hard it is to actually till the soil by hand and the work that farmers must do.

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First Fruits

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You listen to the thump

the dirt makes as you

spade it on to more dirt while

you till the garden by hand because

the Roto-tiller is broken and

you push the spade in the ground

with your foot, turn a clod of dirt

over and lay it diagonally in front of you,

working your way across the garden,

in rows, left to right, then right to left,

so you don’t step in the dirt

that’s already been spaded, and you realize

you still have to hoe and rake

the soil before you can even plant

any seeds, and then you’ll have to water

the seeds each day and care for the plants

as each breaks through the soil, stretching

towards the sun, and you’ll worry that

there will be too much rain or too little,

and you’ll fret over the eggplant

in the southern corner of the garden

that keeps losing its leaves, and your heart

will overflow as the crops begin to come in,

and you’ll rush to the house to show anyone

who is there the first of the tomatoes that seemed

to have suddenly ripened in the noonday sun,

and you will begin to wonder if this is why

Cain did not give God the first of his fruits,

when he made an offering, why he brought

the poorer quality fruits, why he wanted to keep

those first fruits for himself.

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My study of Tanach has helped shape my writing. And my study of poetry has influenced the way I study Tanach. I never really know when something biblical will make its way into my work, but I do know that all I learned is there, just under the surface, waiting to rise up.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Janet Kirschheimer, Guest Blogger

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Janet R. Kirchheimer is a poet whose work has appeared in journals including Atlanta Review, Potomac Review, Limestone, Connecticut Review, Kalliope, Common Ground Review, on beliefnet.com and babelfruit.com, among others. Her collection of poems about the Holocaust, How To Spot One Of Us (2007) received endorsements from Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Sir Martin Gilbert, and Rabbis Harold Kushner and Irving “Yitz” Greenberg. In 2007, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and in 2010, received a Citation for her work from The Council of The City of New York. She is a Teaching Fellow at Clal–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Today the blog returns from its two-week hiatus with new topics and a call for guest bloggers.

Sadly enough, the events involving the shooting in Arizona - where I live - and Congresswoman Giffords on Saturday, feed into one of the new topics - loss and how it affects your writing.

I happened to be enrolled in my very first Creative Writing class ever on September 11, 2001. It was the fourth class of the semester, a Tuesday, and my day off from work. I had dropped my kids off at school that morning - one at a Jewish Day school and the other at a Jewish preschool. In my car on the way home I had my radio on and the news alerted me to the fact that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York.

The news that day got worse and worse. By noon Arizona time it was obvious, to me at least, that there was the distinct possibility that terrorists were fanning out across the country, attacking various targets. Were the Jewish schools next? I did a U-turn in the road on my way somewhere to go pick up my kids as a precaution, just as my phone rang with the first of the two schools telling me they were closing for the day.

For a bunch of really ridiculous reasons, I had waited until I was forty-one-years-old to ever take a writing class. So, even though as the day was unfolding, writing was looking like the most stupid occupation in the world, I asked my mother to watch my kids so I could go.

I walked into the class and, surprisingly enough, so did all my other classmates. By then, we knew the devastation that had taken place in New York. We all felt embarassed of our writing, of even thinking of writing ever in our entire lives. How could we have ever been involved in something so self-centered as writing, we asked our professor? People were dying, jumping out of buildings, planes were crashing, and we were sitting there writing.

And she said, "Don't ever believe that the work you do is unimportant. It's the writers who will define what happened today for generations to come. It's the writers who will write the books and the articles and explain what life was like on this day so historians can write the history of what this day was like. Without writers, we'd know nothing about the Vietnam War, nothing about the entire history of the human people. It's the writers in a society who put form to experience. Never feel bad about writing. Writing is an important job."

I've been grateful many times for those words of hers, as a matter of fact, anytime something horrible happens. Instead of recoiling from my pen, my pen is my only answer, my only outlet. The only salve I have is words. And I no longer downgrade this task, of putting words onto  pages. I realize that writing about the world, even in a tiny corner of it, is a noble task, and carrying on even while being touched by tragedy is not a contradiction in terms.

JWorld Cafe's new topics come from the topics brought up by the guest bloggers we've hosted. The bloggers who have written movingly of how their illnesses sparked their creativity, of how they wrote themselves through a devastating loss, and how they struggle with labels - being either a Jewish writer or a writer who is a Jew, or if faith has no place in their artistic and creative world.

Thanks for reading JWorld Cafe, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Linda Pressman is the Blog Editor of Poetica Magazine and a freelance writer. Her memoir, Looking Up: A Memoir of Sisters, Survivors and Skokie will be released this month.

For many years I never wrote about Judaism. It was something in my background, surfacing a few days a year. About fifteen years ago, it leapt up and demanded a poem. “Abandoned Prayer,” (Poetica: July, 2008) about the difficulty of any sort of belief when one’s parent faults God for the Holocaust. The Jewish-themed poems are coming very slowly for me. I am aware that, when I write one, part of me is dealing with my gross ignorance of my own faith.

Faith, itself, remains powerfully oxymoronic to me. I experience faith more like a pronoun: everyone else uses “we”; I use “us.” the meaning is clear to me, but I often feel it like I’ve used the wrong word. This is not to say I feel like an outsider: I don’t. I am very strongly identified, and comfortable with my Jewish identity. Put it this way: I recently sent my rabbi a poem titled “In the Unbeliever’s Pew.” It’s about an imaginary row in the sanctuary where one can dress down, snooze through the sermon, and talk with friends. “You gotta figure God for an Atheist,” says one voice. “You gotta figure you for an idiot,” says his buddy. Oh, I long for a let-your-hair-down feeling in shul. What about a casual day? Maybe just a few times a year, daven in jeans?

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When I write something of Jewish content, it might be peripheral, as in “Swimming Lessons with the Rabbi,” or it can be a direct evocation, as in “Rashi Reads Numbers.” In every such instance, however, I fear that I’m showcasing my ignorance. I grew up with minimal Judaism. I grew up with a whole lot of identity, and even lived in Israel as a child. Thanks to my wife, our children are growing up as practicing Jews. We’re not force-feeding it to them. We just try to go to synagogue for more than just holidays. All this is straightforward to me compared with writing that deals with a Jewish topic.

Why is it so hard, or so infrequent for me? In part, it seems presumptuous or proselytizing, or attention-seeking. On the other hand, I don’t like the taste in my mouth when I write a Jewish poem: I feel like I’m kissing up to some authority, writing for an audience that inevitably knows more about the topic than I do. Imagine writing a poem in a foreign language that you don’t know very well. One can pull off metaphors and similies. But is it a good poem, or even a poem? The point is: just having certain emotions while writing does not assure a successful poem. In English I can see the poem qua poem. I can evaluate its poetics, and taste of it as poetry. When I write about Jewish themes, I sometimes feel like I’m only manipulating language and themes. Like a child who has heard grown-ups laugh after a certain phrase, and so uses that phrase because it signals “humor” in her mind. Still, I’ve managed to write a few poems that depend upon the fact of my being Jewish.

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I have a running discussion with one of my running buddies. She’s a spiritual person, in terms of the human spirit being entwined, somehow, with a super-human presence. I’m not a spiritual person, but she says I am. It’s not projection. I don’t argue with her about it. Oh, we talk about it a whole lot. We’re trafficking, here, in the realms of unverifiable truth. I think “spiritual” entails some measure of belief. She thinks it inheres in how one treats others. And when we get to that point, who am I to argue? This is especially true since, in my understanding, the covenant is evinced by how one behaves towards other people.

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This brings us back to the question of what makes a Jewish poem. It’s like saying someone is only an economist when he talks about money. Is a poem a Jewish poem because it’s written by a Jew? No: no more than a poem that references Judaism makes the poet Jewish. Writing for this venue has clarified some things for me: when I want to write a poem about something Jewish, I do so. I do so as a Jewish Poet. It’s not going to come easily or in an unconflicted way. In that sense, it will be true to my experience of my Jewish life. Nor would I have it any other way.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Cafe, the Poetica Magazine Blog

David A. Epstein, Ph.D., Guest Blogger

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David A. Epstein, Ph.D. works as a house-spouse and a carpenter. He is a member of the Brickwalk poetry group in Connecticut, and is a board member of The Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens. He has published poems in Poetica, Poetic Hours, The Lyric, Blue Collar Review, and Shofar. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

My marriage of 7 years just ended because my wife gave her phone number to a guy at a grocery store she felt a connection to. This man is the same man who almost broke up our marriage a year ago. My heart told me to end it then. My mind did not. My mind told me to stay because it didn't want to deal with the truth. Too much to lose. The mind doesn’t like losing.

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The heart, on the other hand, understands loss is a part of life and often a healthy one. My heart knew my marriage was over. My heart kept whispering to me to end it, that she didn't love me anymore. My mind told me not to. A year ago, I listened to my mind, but when I found out recently about her renewed contact, I listened to my heart. This time I listened to the quiet voice of the heart, that not only communicated to my mind to end it, but that after I heal I will find a loving and kind woman to connect with on a deeper and truthful level.

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No matter what happens in our lives, whether it’s rejection, loss, disappointment, betrayal or something else, we must always, always listen to the heart and the messages it subtly speaks. But how do you know the difference between what the heart is saying and what the mind is saying? How do you know what the mind tells you you're feeling and what the heart really feels, instead?

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Here are 7 suggestions that will help you understand the language of the heart:

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1. First, do some research on the heart. I suggest reading books about the heart, like The Heart's Code by Paul Pearsall and an anthology called Handbook for the Heart, edited by Richard Carlson and Benjamin Shield.

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2. Make a decision to be open to your heart and then do some writing to get in touch with your heart. Ask your heart questions. Ask your heart what it wants you to know right now. Be open to the answers. Don't let the ego or the mind distract you from this experience. You are on a path of spiritual growth and getting in touch with your heart is part of this process.

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3. Meditate to quiet your mind. What you are doing is allowing your mind to rest so you can be in touch with your spirit, which I'm convinced resides in the heart. Here are some good books to start with: Meditation by OSHO, Instant Meditation For Stress Relief by John Hudson, and Meditation Made Easy by Lorin Roche.

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4. When something happens in life that the mind perceives as negative, ask your heart how it perceives the same event, and be open to the answer. You will be surprised by what it says. Be open to listening to the heart's response, instead, that doesn't know contradiction. Talk to your heart. Listen to the answers.

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5. Make the decision to be aware. Be aware of your thoughts, of the energy around you, of nature, of your reactions to life's events. When you are aware, you are opening your heart. And part of being aware means you must quiet that voice of your mind. In your awareness, acknowledge its presence but listen to your heart.

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6. Trust in the quiet voice of your heart. Treat your heart with respect. Talk to your heart. Get to know your heart.

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7. Finally, ask yourself how something feels before you analyze it with your mind. Then ask yourself this: What is the true feeling behind the reaction? In my opinion, there are two types of feelings and one is not real. The feeling that is perceived as real but that is not real, is the one your mind creates. This feeling is a falsehood. The heart is the only true test of knowing how something feels. You will often find the heart's voice when you are in trancelike states, like when you are driving, taking a shower, gardening, hiking in nature, swimming or meditating. Pay attention to the voices that come during those times.

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Ending my marriage was one of the best things I have ever done for myself. My heart guided me and is still helping me to understand the hurt I feel because of my wife's betrayal. But my heart also told me not to blame her, not to be angry anymore at what happened, that I was at fault too, that we drifted apart and changed, that the life path once shared was not to be shared anymore. I'm still healing but my heart says I will be fine, that now I have the freedom to create a life based on my heart's true vision. A life surrounded by what makes me happy, a life of joy and appreciation, of love and respect, and fulfillment.

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Jody Helfand has over 50 publications in poetry and prose. He has an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English and has been teaching English and writing for over 15 years. His first book of poems, Places Male And Female, can be found on http://www.poeticapublishing.com/ . His second book, But How Did They Live?, about the Holocaust, will be published in February 2011. Visit his website at http://www.jodyrosehelfand.com/  . - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

I believe the answers to our creative ways lie in our subconscious minds. I also believe there is no specific formula or answer to being creative or to access this abundant inner wisdom. As writers, we need to choose ways that inspire and motivate, that resonate deep within. My intention for this article is to invite you to read about ways to access your subconscious mind that have helped me and that have helped my students. After 15 years of teaching, I confidently recommend that as you read, choose what chooses you. Stay true to your first initial feeling and instinct.

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What follows are 7 suggestions to help tap you into the creative process by accessing your subconscious mind:

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1. Write down the answer to this question in a notebook: Why do I write? Be very specific. My answer is this: I write to express emotion, to find peace and clarity in experience, to share my experiences with others, and to create ideas on paper that meet and exceed my wildest imaginings.

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2. Do these quotes from The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, by Joseph Murphy stir emotion? If so, seek this book out.

     A. "Partners who love each other do not do anything unloving or unkind in word, manner, or action. Love is what love does."

     B. "Charge your subconscious with the task of evolving an answer to any problem, prior to sleep, and it will answer you."

     C. "Knowing the laws of your subconscious mind, you will always be supplied regardless of what form money takes."

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3. Answer this question: What is the most beautiful music you can think of to listen to right now? Listen to this music lying silently in your bed and choose lighting that comforts you or no lighting at all. Close your eyes. Shut off your cell phone. You are only available for yourself during this time. Lie still in any way you feel comfortable and simply listen. Become one with this music. Listen carefully to the voice, the instruments, and then transition from listening, to feeling. Breathe music. Breathe the inspiration that surrounds this music. Breathe the love, beauty, and joy of music. I listen to Sigur Ros, Sarah Mclachlan, and Dead Can Dance and many others. I listen for at least 30 minutes and every time, I feel renewed, refreshed, and invigorated when I "come out" of this meditation.

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4. Be with nature. Observe nature. Be still with nature. Remember your childhood, when nature comforted, when nature inspired you to be playful, when nature excited you. Think about how nature transcends and moves. How nature withstands. Notice the smallest details of nature. Quiet your mind and learn from the wisdom of nature.

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5. Buy a card deck and do readings for yourself. I use Animal Messages by Susie Green and Healing With The Angels Oracle Cards by Doreen Virtue.

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6. Go to a toy store and spend money on toys that excite you. Take them home and play with them. Access the child within without judgement. Embrace playfulness.

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7. Create affirmations around trust, self-love, gratitude, health, abundance, creativity. Use strong and powerful words. Write your own affirmations. Think about tense and using words and phrases that raise your frequency. Use words and phrases like empower, ignite, spark, flow, ease, authentic, genuine, in the heart of my being, all is well, meeting and exceeding my wildest imaginings, in perfect timing, I am physically and emotionally safe; a book that has helped me tremendously and one I highly recommend is My Miracle Manifestation Manual by Jacquelyn Aldana.

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Like I said before, the answers to our creative ways lie in our subconscious minds. Think about musicians, writers, dancers, artists, and other creative people. What do we have in common? We are part of each other, connected, yes, but we also share something sacred and powerful that lies within us and are all on a path, a journey in this life to access it: Inner wisdom, inner knowing, secrets to love, life, and happiness. Once we decide to nurture this part of ourselves, true knowing, related to the creative process, follows.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Jody Helfand, Guest Blogger

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Jody Helfand has over 50 publications in poetry and prose. He has an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English and has been teaching English and writing for over 15 years. His first book of poems, Places Male And Female, can be found on http://www.poeticapublishing.com/ . His second book, But How Did They Live?, about the Holocaust, will be published in February 2011. Visit his website at http://www.jodyrosehelfand.com/ . - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

I have a mental illness. I was practically born with it: at five I went to my first psychiatrist; at thirteen I was diagnosed with Major Depression and placed in a hospital; at twenty-one my illness “blossomed” and I was rediagnosed with bipolar schizoaffective disorder. (For those curious, bipolar refers to moodiness and schizoaffective refers to mild hallucinating.) Normally illness is not what inspires my work, but in the case of my work in progress, The Bible According to Eve, the original idea was inspired by a hallucination I had.

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In a sense it was even embedded in the location where I was. I was working as a volunteer at a club for the mentally ill. My job was to teach students math and English at the remedial level. I had a college degree and it was clear from the first that I was “high functioning” and able to help ones who were not-so-high-functioning.

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One day, however, I was hallucinating too badly to work and one of the things I “saw” was myself as Eve with a male friend in a “Garden” being harassed by Ahair. Why Ahair? Well, in the Talmud, there was a rabbi named Elisha ben-Avuyah. One day he saw a young boy in a tree brushing the birds away from the eggs in their nest in order to bring them down to his aged and crippled father. Then the boy fell from the tree and died. The rabbi then became Ahair, an ardent atheist. So Ahair entered my own personal mythology.

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Haunted by my hallucination with its bogeyman of a less sympathetic Ahair, I wrote a poem. I remember the hallucination to remember that I had an abiding sense that Ahair must be visiting me for some sin, although I knew that wasn’t real.

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We discovered a land of

dark colors, of blood reds and

deep greens of the same shades as

pine needles on trees throughout

the year, from flowering to

snow burying life itself—

but leaving the leaves in tact.

There was a pomegranate tree

that we were told not to pick

and eat fruit from its branches

that grew deep within Eden,

in which we basked in chastely

as children, yet still bound by

the wrists as before we’d been

in the cave of dark Ahair.

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This poem led to a larger project: a woman’s Bible with one poem for each woman or reference to a woman in the Bible, which in turn led to another project.

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I had heard in a class a long time ago that, when they tell their stories, women talk in terms of relationships while men talk in terms of accomplishments. One section that I found intriguing while working on my Bible project early on was the relationships between Jacob’s wives and concubines, Leah, Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah. I used the four of them as vehicles to write about polygamy. In working on women in the Torah, I tried to think in terms of relationships. Inspired by that, I wrote this:

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As a child Joseph carried rumors

of the sons of his stepmothers, maids

and concubines of their spouse Jacob.

He told his father that they complained

of Jacob as a lecherous fool,

egged on by their own mothers, who laughed

that behind Jacob’s back that it was

the once shy Leah who kept the tents

as managed as they were while the maids

kept it clean while the love-lorn Jacob

would wander, lost in his self-pity

which he said was grief because he lost

his one love, Rachel, and could only

thank God that he still had young Joseph…

through Joseph… [Father Jacob] learned of

poor Reuben’s indiscretion with ‘her,’

sad Bilhah, who would have been stoned by

the angry Jacob had not Leah

come between the two of them, and so

proved Leah had since her youth become

quite formidable, unyielding and

as uncompromising towards Jacob as

the power within ‘his’ tents as she

had continued her wrathful struggle

with the dead Rachel, lovelier in

the grave than she had been in her life.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Jennifer Alderson, Guest Blogger

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Jennifer Alderson was born in Topeka, KS in 1978. She moved at age eight to Wichita,  finished high school at East High and went on to Friends University. In between starting and finishing school in 2001, Jenny started what would be an unusually long conversion process to Judaism from her original Protestant faith, converting eventually with a rabbi ordained both Orthodox and Conservative. Although she attends both Reform and Orthodox synagogues, she considers herself Conservative. She is a writer and poet whose work has been published in Poetica Magazine and Mim'amakim. She is presently working on her book The Bible According to Eve. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

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