I've been a reader, and fan, of Poetica Magazine much longer than I've been its Blog Editor.

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In early 2009, I received an email from the publisher of Poetica, Michal Mahgerefteh, in which she asked her readers to provide comments on the website. Since I was already a blogger, I provided my comments regarding the quality of the blog on the website, which, at the time, was largely nonexistent. Suddenly, I was the Blog Editor.

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I'd always been a reader. For the eight years prior to that time I'd been a writer as well. In the last nearly two and a half years now I've had the great privilege to be the editor of this blog.

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Sometimes when you begin something, your original vision for what it will be changes over time. That's what happened with JWorld Cafe. I'd originally planned to write all the blog posts; an editor in name only. But a few months into it, as I was about to go on vacation, I decided to run an Open Forum in which we'd post the work of our readers. It was then that I discovered our readers had a lot more to say than could be contained in the Open Forum. Of course - our readers were writers.

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The guest bloggers we've hosted on JWorld Cafe have offered glimpses into everything from their creative process, their artwork, and their writing habits, to how they learned to write again after loss or illness.

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Through them I learned to try again too. In the year preceding becoming Blog Editor I had been through some serious disappointments trying to get my book published, both with the agents who represented me and the publishing houses involved. Reading the stories of our readers - our writers - taught me to try again too.

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This post marks the beginning of a hiatus for the blog and for myself, as I'll be promoting my book over the next few months.  

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Thanks, as always for reading JWorld Cafe, the Poetica Magazine Blog.

Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

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Linda Pressman is the Blog Editor of Poetica Magazine and the author of the newly released memoir, Looking Up: A Memoir of Sisters, Survivors and Skokie. Her work has appeared in publications including Brain, Child Magazine, the the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, and Mizmor L’David, a anthology of work by children of Holocaust Survivors. She blogs at Bar Mitzvahzilla and at Open Salon and lives in Scottsdale, Arizona with her husband and two children.

I'm an archivist. I left an accounting job to enroll in library school and graduated last May. The crux of the matter is that I live in Boston. This city is saturated with library students, graduates, and professionals. I have to fight my way to the top.

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Because of this, I've been unemployed since February, and even while it was not unexpected, it's been tough. Living off what savings I accrued working this past summer at Harvard University, pinching pennies, determining if I really do need to pay my cell phone bill (the answer is yes; the answer is always yes) I'm lucky, at least. I have a roof over my head, and my roommates are certainly not going to kick me out. While they might complain, they'll usually pick up groceries on the weeks I should.

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It's odd sometimes, recognizing patterns in your psyche. I spent the two months prior to the unemployment too stressed to sleep, reading or staring at the ceiling until three in the morning, waking up at eight. Feeling as if I was walking around in a fog. That stress is gone, eased into the beginning of despair. That slowly growing feeling of wondering – is this my fault? What if I'm not trying hard enough? What if I'm looking in all the wrong places? What if this is me failing?

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Poetry is not going to help. Fiction is not going to help. Gritting my teeth alone is not going to help. So, I fall into patterns.

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I find myself not always eating as much or when I should. I've reached the point in the cycle, where I'm not sleeping too little, but too much. I'm feeling myself more withdrawn, less able to write what I want to write. That's the largest difference here – not always being able to write.

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Still, this is not a breakdown, I keep telling myself. This is depression. There's a difference. I console myself with everything I'll do once I have a job. Pay off my immediate debts. Start studying martial arts again. Start building my savings. Travel.

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I keep pushing back my deadline. Originally, it was last October. Now, it's by my sister's wedding in late-May.

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Poetry will always fall into the cracks - cracks and fractures, which I thought healed over. I'm forcing the words out one by one, and hoping they spill onto the page in a way which equals something more than just words. I write of the golems and dybbuks, because, at least in writing stories I grew up on, I can find comfort.

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This too shall pass. I know that. I keep the reminder above my desk. Framed words of wisdom my great-uncle gave me for when I finished my baccalaureate.

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“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not: unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

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They are words I have lived by since I was seventeen, and I am, if nothing else, persistent in my endeavours. In the meantime, I keep on. I'm keeping my fingers sticky in the library cookie jar. I'm constantly poking contacts and friends in the business. I'm trying my best to remain positive.

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Nothing else one can do, except continue to write.

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Cracked

With the fervor I've been writing recently,

you'd think something had broke, which is,

perhaps, the cypher I seek. I've fallen

by the wayside, jumped off the cliff

years and years ago, and have been flying

since. I've shoved the issues to out of space,

and glossed over what I should have not.

It's not that I'm not thankful for the

emotional dam, the inspired creativity

after a dry spell, but I could do without the

frantic typing, the lurking panic attacks.

I suppose it is too late to say I've learned

my lessons, that I'm finally taking such

other matters into my own hands –

get my head on straight, or straighter,

push past the anxiety, self-deworth,

and uncertainty, figure out

where everything first cracked,

slowly mend the fissures -

and I'm all too aware such processes

will take time, and darling.

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I'll come through,

because I have perseverance,

and for once, I will land on my

feet.

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Stefanie Maclin's poetry and short fiction has appeared in several publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including Under the Radar, The Maynard, Doorknobs&Bodypaint, Astropoetica, Star*Line, The Linnett's Wings, Underground Voices, Battered Suitcase, and Poetica Publishing's Mizmor L'David Anthology: The Shoah. She has guest blogged previously for Poetica Magazine. She has work forthcoming in Illumen, Ashe Journal, and Skive Magazine. She has recently completed her Master's degree in Library Science/Archives Management and is working on what she hopes will be her first full-length chapbook, a work she is tentatively titling Descent. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

In 2009 I posted some poems on the Poetica Magazine website and received a personal email from a reader in India. In response I emailed a poem to him that I had written about India. He suggested I post it on an Indian Literary journal site. Shernaz was a regular contributor there and I immediately felt that we were of kindred spirits. We met in Mumbai in Febrary 2010 during a visit I made to India. During our meeting, I described a form of joint poetry writing to her that I had learned from Sarah Wurtzel in Jerusalem in which each poet writes a nine-line poem on a chosen subject. The originator of the title then interweaves the two poems line by line with minimal editing.

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We decided to try this via email. The results were not inspiring so we remodeled the idea giving ourselves greater editing flexibility and making it into a more collaborative effort with far-reaching possibilities. Our challenging and exciting adventure had begun and the Tapestry Poetic form was born. We call it “Tapestry” since it’s a word that beautifully captures the sentiment and essence of the form and the intertwining of two different thought processes into a rich tapestry of words.

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The rules we formulated are that one of us gives a title and then we each compose a nine-line poem. We only open the other’s poem after both have been exchanged. Next comes the ‘weaving’ to interlace them into one seamless, flowing piece. The editing remains a to and fro process till we are both satisfied with the result. Bold italics are used for one of the poems to allow readers a picture of the weaving process. Additionally, the nine lines of each individual poem and the majority of the words must be kept; changes are allowed for singular and plural but only minimal changes for verbs, adverbs and adjectives; and only the giver of the title has the option of using it in the poem.

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When the variegated threads of our distinctly individual poems are woven together the result is an aesthetic word-scape as seen in these two Tapestries:

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RAPTURE - by Shernaz

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The Word was uttered

And Life sprang up

In beauteous splendor

To pay obeisance

To His Eternal Will

Ever since it has been

An ongoing love affair…

This rapturous desire of Life

To procreate itself.

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RAPTURE- by Avril

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The music began

Slowly, almost imperceptibly,

instrument after instrument added its voice.

Conductor, musicians, audience.

All held in rapture

by the ascending melody.

It was as if Heaven had opened

and drenched us all

in its celestial symphony.

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RAPTURE --Tapestry

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The Word was uttered

The music began

and Life sprang up

Slowly, almost imperceptibly…

In beauteous splendor

instrument after instrument added its voice,

to pay obeisance

to His Eternal Will.

Conductor, musicians, audience,

all held in rapture

by the ascending melody.

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Ever since it has been

an ongoing love affair…

It was as if Heaven had opened

this rapturous desire of Life

and drenched us all,

to procreate itself,

in it’s celestial symphony

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The Wind of Change by Shernaz

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let it be the force that flows

under feathers of peace

the bond that secures

the brotherhood of man

the salve that heals

the carrier of compassion

the ambassador of love

the redeemer of mankind

Hail! the wind of change

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The Wind of Change by Avril

It’s there,

whispering in the trees

A new beginning

A desire within our souls

to seek the truth

An awakening awareness

of the earth’s cry to be healed.

A deep inner yearning

that knows no borders

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The Wind of Change---TAPESTRY

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Hail! the wind of change!

A new beginning

whispering in the trees;

the force that flows

under feathers of peace

in an awakening awareness

of the earth’s cry to be saved

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It's here!

the redeemer

carrier of compassion

seeker of truth

ambassador of love

the salve that heals

an inner yearning

sown deep within our souls

that knows no borders

a bond that secures

the brotherhood of man

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To date we have worked on twenty-seven titles and only two turned out impossible to weave, the differences between our individual poems being too great.

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Tapestry Poetics has allowed us to intertwine our two hearts and minds around a central unifying topic, allowing us to bring our histories, our cultures and even our religions - I am Jewish and Shernaz is Zoroastrian - with us, essentially making peace on the page and proving that Poetry has no borders.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Avril Meallam and Shernaz Wadia, Guest Bloggers

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Avril Meallem was born in London and attended St. Mary’s Hospital where she studied physiotherapy. She immigrated to Israel in 1998 with her husband and now lives in Jerusalem. She began writing poetry in 1997, with 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. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

"Blindfolded" part of the "Surviving Genocide" series by Raquel Partnoy

Sixteen years ago, when I moved to the United States, I felt that its English language was a kind of shelter which I could use to write on the terror my family and many others had endured during the seven years of dictatorship in Argentina: disappearances, torture, killing at the hands of a terrorist state. This new language has given me the necessary physical and psychological distance to be able to write about what I had experienced during that time. Writing essays, poems, and my book length narrative poem City of Red Horizons, made me concentrate more on the English grammar than on my feelings.

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I have been nourished by three languages and cultures. My mother’s Yiddish tongue and the Jewish traditions she brought with her to Argentina awakened my love to read Jewish writers and learn about her world as well as to understand more about her sad memories. Argentina was the country her family had chosen when they escaped the horrors of Czarist Russia, I grew up there, and the Spanish language enriched my life through the magnificent Latin American and Spain’s authors. I have memories of myself, an already avid reader at fourteen, going to my city’s bookstores to buy affordable editions of novels by well-known authors. For years I kept that collection which I regarded as my treasure. Later in my life, the English Language allowed me to read the original works of great poets, and also testimonies of Holocaust survivors. As I began to read those testimonies, I noticed many similarities in procedures between the genocide committed during the Holocaust and that perpetrated by the military dictatorship in Argentina. I decided to unify both subjects and paint the series Surviving Genocide. At the same time I wrote an essay on the same subject.

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Early in my career I used to paint landscapes of Bahía Blanca, my hometown in Argentina. Although I draw large human figures on paper, I had not yet thought about including them in my oil paintings. So it was not by chance that in 1976 small figures began to appear at the doors, windows, and skies of my cityscapes. That was precisely the year when Argentina began to experience one of the cruelest chapters of its history. A military coup took place; thirty thousand people disappeared and were eventually massacred by the government.

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When my daughter disappeared and my son felt in a state of depression I thought that I would need more than single works to picture what was going on in my country at that time. I began working on series of paintings and also writing essays on the subjects of those paintings that later were included in the catalogs of my exhibits. The figures would grow larger on my canvases and became the main characters of my work. It took me several years to produce the first series of paintings where I was able to start expressing my experience. However, later I realized much had gone unexpressed in those paintings, and then I began writing poems inspired by each of them. It was a sort of dialogue between the image I had in front of me and my memory.

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The voices of the authors who have experienced injustice, or worry about it, like Adrianne Rich, Silvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Muriel Rukeyser, Whitman, among others, have been the forces that encouraged me to write and tell the story of my family, which is a part of the saddest chapter of my country’s history.

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Lately, I have started to “translate” my poems to Spanish and this is a very different story. It is not the same thing writing “would they leave my daughter safe on the streets?” than: ¿dejarían ellos libre a mi hija por las calles? or “make them disappear” than “hacerlos desaparecer.” I deeply feel the weight of the Spanish words, they are heavier and more painful than the English ones. While switching from one language to the other I feel that my Jewish roots, and the experience of my ancestors, are always alive in my writings.

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Although I have devoted most of my years to painting, I believe that both painting and writing have always been the engines that gave me the strength to keep on living and to survive.

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Raquel Partnoy is an Argentine painter, poet, and essayist who has lived in Washington, D.C. since1994. Her solo exhibits in this city include: Parish Gallery; B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum; Embassy of Argentina; D.C. Jewish Community Center; Studio Gallery. Her work has been featured in: Arte al Día-Documenta 87 - La Plástica Norteamericana; The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology; Religious Imagination and the Body: A Feminist Analysis; CALYX, a Journal of Art and Literature by Women US. Her essays have been published in Women Writing Resistance-Essays on Latin American and the Caribbean; The Jewish Diaspora in Latin American and the Caribbean: Fragments of Memory. Her narrative poem City of Red Horizons will be published in Argentina in 2011. Please see more of her poetry at her blog City of Red Horizons and her artwork at her blog Pintores Argentinos. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Over the years I have had many reasons for writing, the childlike desire to create like drawing with crayons, the need to find a safe place to vent adolescent frustrations, and as a young adult trying to find a direction for my life. Once the words were strung together and the ideas explored, I thought I would find the hidden treasure of personal contentment. While raising a family in my strange new world of suburbia, the writing became a tool to help me improve my outlook on life and soothe myself. My journals were a hiding place and a way to put things in perspective. I had always helped friends write term papers in college and as a fundraiser I was writing all the time, letters, speeches, event brochures, and promotional materials. Most recently I have been helping friends write speeches for their children’s Bar Mitzvahs.

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The one thing missing from my writing repertoire was a way to share my creative writing. I never figured out a way to describe to people what I meant when I said I like to write. So I decided to “come out of the closet.” I started a Blog. The resulting essays, and observations I posted were like pictures hung on an invisible wall (the internet).

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I first began scribbling notes and using writing as a way to escape the pain of losing my father when I was 9 years old. When he was alive, I was the center of his world. I was the singing and dancing sensation starring in my very own variety show every Saturday night in our living room. I had a captive audience. I did not know and it did not matter that I was probably off key, and clumsy. My audience adored me. I made the room light up. When the lights went out on March 9th 1970, my show ended. No one wanted to see me sing or dance and I was not particularly interested in performing anymore anyway. Silence seemed more desirable than music. Pen on paper and pain in hand and heart led me in a new direction. I have no idea where most of those old spiral notebooks went.

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When a child loses a parent the world becomes very confusing. It is no longer a matter of what is for lunch, who am I going to play with, will I get that shiny red bicycle? Suddenly there are questions that simply cannot be answered. I don’t mean “why is the sky blue?” types of questions. I mean questions like “What is the meaning of life? What is a soul? Why can’t you hug a memory? Who is going to protect me from the bad people?” The writing was my way of making a map to lead me out of the foggy mental landscape where I suddenly found myself wandering.

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While I was growing up, my mom was always filling my head with stories about her life, the Great Depression, being homeless, dozens of cousins with complicated lives. This was her way of making me resilient. She was telling me to look at everything our family had survived. I learned I could rely on her and that I was made from strong stock. During one of my cleaning sprees in her apartment I discovered a paper bag filled with black and white photos in her bedroom closet. They were all there. Her cousins, old neighbors, and the dog she had growing up. We spent hours every week at the kitchen table putting the photos in albums and writing down all her stories in the white spaces next to the pictures. I think that was some of the most important writing I have ever done.

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I spent my life afraid of losing my mother. Would she “disappear” from my life just like my father had? Even though I was a grown, married woman with children during the time my mom and I made those books, there was also a 9-year-old child inside my head questioning why “no one lives forever.”

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Lately I’ve had difficulty writing. I’ve abandoned my blog. It’s sitting there waiting for new entries as I struggle to find my way in the world without my mother. Maybe I really did think she was going to live forever? I should write about her so all the good things she gave me will travel through eternity where we will meet up again.

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I should write.

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Thanks for Reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog.

Benita Haberman, Guest Blogger.

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Benita Haberman is a writer who lives and works in Chicago. Besides blogging at House of Mirrors she is a stay at home mother of a 14-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. She also uses her writing skills to assist people with writing speeches and toasts for a variety of special occasions from Bar Mitzvahs to Wedding Anniversaries. She has taken stand up comedy classes at the Improv Playhouse in Libertyville, Illinois and her first two 5 minute debut performances are posted on youtube. You can reach her directly at benita-houseofmirrors@blogspot.com  - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

In May of 2009 I came up with this great idea to begin writing a blog and use it as a countdown to my 50th birthday. On my actual birthday in 2010 I would do a stand up comedy show (a life-long fantasy) and share what I had written with all my friends. The topics were all over the place, essays, humor, and memoir. One “series” of posts related the stories of my grammar school days. I loved telling my children funny stories about all the nasty teachers I had. These posts were my form of literary revenge. I did it with humor at first, but the tone changed when I wrote about 4th grade. I had to recount what it was like being a 9-year-old whose father had just died in March and having the class art project being the construction of a Father’s Day card.

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On that day in June of 1970 I made my most meaningful Father’s Day Card. It was all about my mom and how now she was both my mother and my father. When I gave the card to my mom she cried. She knew how hard it must have been for me. My mom and I moved forward together, getting closer and closer as the years went by. Our relationship often confused people. It evolved into a complicated, all encompassing place that only she and I understood. We were both afraid of confrontation with anyone except each other, leaving our relationship one of love, loyalty, matching personalities and yet containing an element of volatility. Our relationship was the only place where we each felt truly safe.

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My mother’s life read like a Dickens novel. When I was growing up she would tell me the stories of her troubling childhood. She was the youngest of five children. Her only sister was the oldest, and there were three boys in between. Because of the Depression, my mother had to start working at the age of 8, officially ending her childhood. The “hard” life seemed to follow her everywhere. But her naturally outgoing disposition carried her through all the difficulties.

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When my own childhood started getting more complicated I slowly learned the value in the lessons of my mother’s stories. I was only six-years-old when my mother began to lose her siblings, first a brother and then her only sister died. A year later, my dad died. My mother’s main source of emotional support, her sister, and our family’s financial support, my dad, were both gone. Two years later my grandmother died and my mother and I found ourselves immersed in grief yet again. All this shared loss bound my mother and I into a thick rope of determination and hope. We tied each end of that rope tightly around our waists so we would never lose each other in the stormy waters where we found ourselves adrift.

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As my mother got older she dealt with horrible pain from arthritis and even had a triple bypass, yet she never seemed “sick”. Her love of life and people kept her going and often kept other people going as well. She was quite popular in her retirement home. She loved dinner with friends, playing bingo and beating me in cards. Her mental acuity never waned.

But when 2009 began winding down, so did my mother. My goals for 2010 suddenly changed, from writing my blog and planning a party, to spending time managing my mother’s increasing medical needs, and realizing I was counting down to something far more important than my 50th birthday. I was running out of days where I could count on my mother’s love and support to get me through whatever difficulties life brings.

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My mother’s strength of spirit could always be felt by the power she had in her voice. It had an indescribable tone she could summon up on demand when needed. It was that voice that always relieved my fears. It was that voice that was starting to falter. On April 20, 2010 my mother untied her end of our rope and left me alone to tread the waters in this turbulent world. I am surrounded by the invisible grief no one else can see. I had no idea how heavy emptiness can feel.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Benita Haberman, Guest Blogger

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Benita Haberman is a writer who lives and works in Chicago. Besides blogging at House of Mirrors she is a stay at home mother of a 14-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. She also uses her writing skills to assist people with writing speeches and toasts for a variety of special occasions from Bar Mitzvahs to Wedding Anniversaries. She has taken stand up comedy classes at the Improv Playhouse in Libertyville, Illinois and her first two 5 minute debut performances are posted on youtube. - 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,

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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.

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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.

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