Hiatus

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 04:56:00 +0000

JWorld Cafe is on hiatus. Please see the home page for any open submission calls.

Thank you to our readers, our writers and for all the support you have given to make Poetica Magazine and this blog a success!

Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Being a Writer, Being a Reader

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 02:33:00 +0000

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

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.

Writing After Death

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:18:00 +0000

I was working on my first book of poetry. I had decided to self-publish. My husband and I agreed it was the right time; we were in the right position. I had enough pieces to choose from, and there were to be four separate sections that would flow into and organically follow one another into the planned slim but substantial volume. Each piece had been carefully selected, edited and categorized. I was putting the pages into a plastic sleeve – everything was that ready. My editor and writing partner, Ruthie, was on the phone, we had just discussed the cover graphic.

When my husband screamed from another part of the house I said, “Ruthie, we’ve got an emergency, I’ll call you back.”

Ten days later Ruthie visited me in the waiting area of the hospital ICU where my husband’s life was precariously balanced between the spiritual world and ours. I hadn’t called her, but the “grapevine” had updated her. Ruthie and I didn’t speak of my poetry book again for about two years. During that time my life and those of my family had been sliced off and discarded by the amputation of my husband’s leg and subsequent, continuous, illnesses.

The transition from poet to full-time caregiver was jolting, heart breaking and revealing. It revealed an amazing strength that I could only have guessed at. And at the same time, I found myself to be a coward who was no longer in touch with her feelings. The social worker in ICU had suggested that I keep a diary, an especially good therapeutic tool for a writer. On second thought, I told myself, no. I was too afraid to remember any of the emotional turmoil. At that point I had no idea how long my husband would live, if at all. I never wrote a word of what happened in real time; I do not want to experience any type of vivid re-call. The memories of that time, when they do come in the small doses that my sub-conscious will allow, are all negative in the extreme.

About two years or more into my husband’s illnesses, which had developed from an acute crisis into a chronic one, I again dared to pick up the plastic sleeve of poems, with Ruthie on the other end of the telephone. I found the whole process, the poems, the editing and sorting, even the idea of publishing, meaningless and a waste of time. I thought no one would be interested any longer; my words had lost their unique ring.

To prove my point to Ruthie I read a stanza from my poem “Gray Hair” (published in Israel Senior Life): “The stray gray hair / has been hidden for years / under the brown wig / waiting for the war to end”.

“So what,” was my attitude. Then I read to her from “Hannah” (published in Fallopian Falafel): “Mother! / Daughters cry out through the generations” – and I shrugged into the phone. Who wrote these? And, what does anyone care? To me they seemed valueless.

Ruthie parried with full quotes from several of my other poems, award winners among them, and they left me empty. I had been writing throughout the crisis – I never completely stopped. But I no longer recognized myself in my work, didn’t feel I could “waste my time” with it. I was no longer me; the earlier version was exposed for the fraud I felt she was. But Ruthie persuaded me to go to a poetry workshop that I had given up at the start of the crisis.

The group leader, having heard my self-flagellating introduction said, “I don’t want to hear that any more, you’re an excellent poet.”

One year after my husband’s passing I can report that my senses have slowly begun to re-convene: I have continued to co-edit, and write for The Deronda Review; I have submitted poems and articles elsewhere, albeit at a much slower rate. With the encouragement of writers here in Gush Etzion, I started a writing workshop which I call Pri HaGush, the sister group to Pri Hadash in Jerusalem. Surrounded by writing companions, I have been able to breathe more easily as I write. I have stopped tiptoeing around the rawness of my feelings. Even before mourning and grieving entered my life, writing was a process. The women writers of Pri HaGush have helped me recognize myself, the old and new versions, at least as much as I have helped them with writing skills and publishing venues as the group leader.

Most recently I attended the Jewish Women’s Writing Conference in Jerusalem, where I reconnected with friends and colleagues, and put a face on my by-line from cyber-space.

I still have so much to work out, work through. There are those feelings that I’d rather not deal with. There are the conflicts, the regrets, and guilt too. But yes, there is writing after death. I didn’t die, my words haven’t died, neither has my style. I just need a reminder from time to time.

Thanks for Reading JWorld Café, The Poetica Magazine Blog

Mindy Aber Barad, Guest Blogger

Mindy Aber Barad’s poetry, stories, book reviews and essays have been published in Fallopian Falafel, The Jewish Press, CyclamensandSwords.com and other publications both on and off line. Mindy is the Israeli co-editor of The Deronda Review. – Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

A Winter State of Mind

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:19:00 +0000

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

Thanks for Reading JWorld Café

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

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

Crying: An Analysis

Mon, 30 May 2011 02:37:00 +0000

I’m writing about my soon-to-be-completed digital video, Tearjerker, an essay documentary on crying and tears. When I started writing this piece for Poetica, I began to wonder, is there something hidden in my Jewish background that piqued my interest in this subject? While Jews have certainly suffered their share of inequities, we are a particularly resilient bunch, and we are adept at using humor to heal. In any case, I’m not sure that any special relationship to crying or grief exists for Jews, although humor is another story!

I don’t particularly consider myself a “cryer”, or a depressive type, although I’ve certainly gone through periods of intense grief and tears. A few years ago, I was browsing in a bookstore and stumbled upon a copy of Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears, by writer and critic Tom Lutz. What most intrigued me were the many images of works of art from medieval painting to contemporary film stills. It seemed to me that crying was a visual subject, and therefore, a very cinematic one. I began watching as many films as I could that had well-known crying scenes, and getting recommendations from others on good examples. I also began looking into current psychological research and theories on crying, as well as on the physiology of tears.

I started working on my project, a digital video consisting of interviews, footage of crying scenes from films and television, and original footage of actors crying, a baby crying, and a doll with a “crying” face, for example. I began to see a few themes emerging: crying from a physical standpoint, and how the body produces tears; as a cathartic act, and the effect on the body and mood after tears, which also includes the strong emotions we feel when experiencing works of art. Also, crying as it relates to gender, and whether or not crying is different for either sex; “faked” crying, or crying that isn’t genuine, but is used to manipulate others; and “magical” properties of tears. This last theme is strictly an artistic device, in which tears are seen to have some sort of supernatural or alchemic power.

I’ve always been interested in situations and experiences that are ubiquitous, that we take for granted because they seem so common. We all cry as babies and children, even if we cry only rarely as adults. Crying is essentially part of an inevitable cycle – no matter how happy we may be, and no matter how hard we might try to avoid pain, we can always count on tears to happen at some point in our lives. I became most fascinated by the transformative power of tears. What makes us cry, and how is that reflected in art? One of my favorite quotes on crying comes from Madelon Sprengnether’s book, Crying At the Movies, in which she writes, “The lesson of crying is metamorphosis”. The act of crying transforms us from sad to happy and back again, in both life and art.

Thanks for Reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Roslyn Broder, Guest Blogger

Roslyn Broder is a Chicago-based graphic designer, jewelry designer, and filmmaker. She received her MFA in filmmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her films and videos have been screened and awarded at numerous festivals and venues around the country. You can find her graphic design work at http://roslynbroder.com/ and her jewelry at http://www.etsy.com/shop/RedAvaDesigns. For information about Tearjerker, contact Roslyn at redorb123@hotmail.com. Follow her on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/redorb1/ - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Heart Conversations

Mon, 23 May 2011 05:16:00 +0000

Yiddish was our language – my Mother and mine. It was the only common language Jews spoke to each other throughout Europe. There were two dialectics – Litvak and Glitzeaner. Mom spoke one, I spoke the other. As was always the case, she wanted me to speak her dialect and I spoke the other one, just because.

I had two names – Sarinou and Saralle (sweet Sara and little Sara). My mother and I spoke only in Yiddish to each other. For me it was always on automatic pilot. No thought process was involved. When I heard her voice my brain responded in Yiddish. Although German was my first language, Yiddish somehow evolved in the refugee camp when I wanted to know what all the grown-ups were whispering about.

My mother died in February of 2006. This conversation took place at her bedside several days before her death.

Mom: "Raialle, (her sister in Israel) dost a bissalle perfume?" (Raia, do you have some perfume?)

Me: "Vart a minute, eech ob a bisalle perfume in the car?" (Wait a minute, I have a little perfume in the car.) "Mom, dee vilst perfume?" (Mom, do you want some perfume?)

Mom: "Nu, spritz meech oon. And lipstick, dee ost a bisalle lipstick?" (Of course, spray me on. And lipstick, do have a little lipstick?)

I put lipstick on her - a beautiful bronze color. Kissed her forehead, kissed her eyes, kissed her face. She held her face up, the way a baby holds its face up when your rub lotion on. She looked a little brighter. She inhaled the attention and breathed a little easier.

Mom: "The government owes me a lot of money. And when they pay me, Saralle, we're going into business. You know 86 is not too old to go into business, is it? Dee ost g'zain dain tatte?" (Have you seen your Father? He'd been dead since August 2005 and they had been divorced since 1976. We hadn’t told her he had died.)

Me: "Eech ob im g'zain." (I saw him.)

Mom: "Git, sz’nisht git ts’zain broyges.” (Good, it’s not good to remain angry.) "Sarinou, eech gay shtarbin?" (Sara, am I going to die?)

Me: “Mom, you want to die?” (I am completely taken off guard, for how are you ever prepared to lose your parents?)

Mom: "Lobin zeech klapen dem kop in deir vant!" (Let them knock their heads into a wall!)

My knees almost gave out, while I’m trying not to laugh hysterically. I sat down next to her bed, my brain racing. Her body is shot. She can lift her right arm and her head a little bit, and she can talk, boy, can she talk. I had a good teacher. Here she is with her body broken, though her spirit, her heart and soul are telling the angel of death to go knock his head into a wall and come and get her if he dares.

I guess if you can escape the wrath of Hitler, be homeless for seven years beginning at nineteen, bury your parents and your first born and leave your sisters behind in Uzbekistan - all before your 25th birthday - travel thousands of miles to Munich, survive a refugee camp with rations of peanut butter, margarine, and white bread, travel by ship three months to America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, and all before your 30th birthday, what's a little dying?

*This was written from Yiddish translated notes at her bedside 26 Jan 06 in Scottsdale, AZ when she was in the hospice. Nusha died a week later.

Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Sara Fryd, Guest Blogger

Sara Fryd is the author of the book, You Meet No Strangers, a collection of 24 stories about growing up an American daughter in an Eastern European family. It is available in paperback at Amazon, Createspace, and in electronic digital format for Kindle and Smashword. She also writes the blog Sara Arizona, with visitors from 180 countries. – Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Open Forum - Week Two

Mon, 16 May 2011 01:35:00 +0000

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.

Ina G. Perlmuter

Shiva for a Mother

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

Choices

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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

Like in Ramallah

Elaine Rosenberg Miller

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

My Broken Soul

Jennifer Alderson

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?”

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.

the joys of being alive

Jeff Goodman

the poet suggests that "we walk

on air

against your better judgment"

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

"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 -"

"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."

the red headed corporal was awakening

the troops, today was a Friday,

time to clean up the camp. 'fore going home

for Shabbat.

Full Circle

Frieda Landau

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.

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.

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.

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.

Beneath the waves

(by Shernaz)

Under the rippling surface off which,

glint moments of mundane existence

a deep stillness belies the agitation

I dive into the tranquility, effortless,

seeking out from recondite beds

exquisite pearls of ancient wisdom

secreted by the oysters of experience

sometimes I pry them open a tad too soon

at times I chance upon the rarest of gems.

(by Avril)

A deep, silent tranquility

obscured by a raging sea.

My own inner world

cradled from the storms around me.

As I enter this space

and merge with the peace

of my innermost being

I connect to my Source

hidden beneath the waves.

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

(by Shernaz)

Often overpowered

by neglected shadows of life,

I cower in dread…will they lead me

into dungeons unknown?

Can they?

When you lift the latch

all my fears will drown

in the surging force

of Your kindly light

(by Avril)

When the gate opens

will I be ready

to catch a glimpse of the Divine?

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

When The Gate Opens — Tapestry

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Open Forum - Week One

Mon, 09 May 2011 04:28:00 +0000

In several recent updates I’ve sent out an open call with my weekly blog updates asking for poetry submissions for an Open Forum to be run on JWorld Café in May. This week’s posting holds some of those submissions. I hope you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed gathering them. The Poetica Open Forum will continue into next week’s blog posting. Please join me also in welcoming the blog's new visual artist, Marlene Burns, whose work is featured above the blog entries. Please visit one of her websites to see more of her inspiring work. – Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Why Can’t The Gardeners Be More Careful

Ina G. Perlmuter

And the headstones of row B83 and 84

lean one toward another as though in conversation

slag colored crumbling edges interrupt the walkway

and beyond stiletto heel prints puncture the fresh rolled grass

My sister and I have come to pay respect to our parents

though we complain to each other

“why can’t the gardeners mow the grass more carefully”

we are glad of this carelessness

And we painstakingly remove grass shavings from the letters

which form the inscription on our parent’s head stone

grateful that we are able to perform this act of love

Oh Mother I Wish We Could Talk

Ina G. Perlmuter

Oh mother, I wish we could talk

I miss you

Mother you instilled by example

seldom threats, never in anger

Mother, I have arrived at a time in my life

I remember you being the age I am now

you seemed more mature,

to have accomplished more

Are my memories selective,

are they colored by time

and seasoned with longing to share

that which is so important to me

Yes mother, I wish we could talk

You had a way of lessening the hurts of childhood

of reinforcing and encouraging a child’s abilities

How I wish you were here to reassure me

that I am being judicious in my role as parent

a positive influence in my children’s lives

I miss you very much mother, if we could talk

perhaps then you could reveal your secrets of parenting to me

I want to make myself as cherished to my children

as you will always be cherished by me

Jeff Goodman

Steps

Who knew that there were steps?

Let alone that they actually lead somewhere.

Up or down

Towards a heaven or towards a hell.

So Jacob slept on the ground

And dreamt a dream of a ladder

With angels going up

And angels going down

We've all heard the story

Some of us have even seen the movie

Who knew there was a wall?

Something real and tangible you might

Actually bump your head against

While ascending albeit unwittingly

Unknowingly. Let alone gates or even

Those secret passageways

Hidden from the uninitiated

Veiled by fate

Who knew that there were actually

Princes and paupers, kings and queens

Banquets being held in really fancy halls

And in rubbish heaps.

People talk, yeah people talk

Professors speak and monkeys leap

The police along the street

Patrol to keep some kind of peace

Order is mostly what they seek

So tuck in your shirt and straighten your stance

The musicians at the ball will never go on strike

They re here to provide the background music

For Kafka on his flight, from the

City inspectors who all they really want to do

Is give him one more parking ticket

Before they go to sleep.

Who knew that they were not

As serious as they pretended to be

That they would have let him off

If he would only speak

It would have been enough if

He would have told them one of those

Parables or paradoxes he was so fond of

In lieu of the cigarette he offered them

But how was he to know

That they were interested in literature?

How was he to know that the sky outside

Was really gray, and that the world really was

Traipsing toward hell, as the musicians

Played and the wealthy danced

How was he to know that the sirens in the street -

That the message delivered to the wizard's hall

From out of the deep, was real?

How was he to know all this?

This commonplace knowledge

Of what actually occurred

As clear as clear can be, coming vividly

Across the six o clock news

The gun shot blast to the head

Of the wincing Vietnamese

Those images embedded in our collective head

Heard and seen by the sensitive, by those who still

Dream. Laying awake at night

Wondering about all those

Steps

They

Didn't

See.

Barry Gonen

What Was, Was (translated from Hebrew)

I was a clerk and studied civil law,

I was a farmer, teacher, musician, and tour guide galore,

I was a soldier and policeman in green uniform,

I always stayed an optimist inside.

I was a photographer, gardener and planted new life,

I was an archeologist, and dug to discover the past.

I whistled, I drew, sang, and wrote many words,

I always remained an optimist inside.

I composed my emotions in multiple scores,

I expressed my thoughts in poems and songs,

I would only think of positive things,

I tried to remain an optimist inside.

I didn’t always agree to new directions,

I was not always satisfied with the changes in life,

I didn’t always want to argue with people,

I struggled to remain an optimist inside.

I am a husband, father, and grandfather to many offspring,

But their future I see not in smiling colors.

I am a little anxious for the world in the future years,

I find it difficult now, to remain, an

Optimist, deep inside.

New Day

Barry Gonen

Every new day beckons adventure into realms of the unknown.

Every breath I breathe has hidden hope for the future of the universe.

Every step I take is strengthened by my latent enthusiasm.

Every word I speak has purpose lacking cynicism.

Every thought I would like to think is embodied with optimism

Every sound I hear has enlightening depths of meaning,

Every sight I see, stamps indelible impressions on my mind,

Every person I meet opens doors to fascinating exploration,

For each approaching night, I give thanks for my existence!

Every dream I envision, reinforces my imagination,

Every morning’s awakening enriches my yearning for life.

When Is?

Barry Gonen

When is a poet not a poet,

a musician not a musician,

an artist not an artist?

When their senses are impaired,

When their vision is blurred,

When their thoughts are disturbed,

When they cease to dream,

When they cease to share,

When they give up on themselves,

When they finally cease to care!

Frieda Landau

No Mind a Whetstone

No mind a whetstone to my own

Allusions fly past uncaught

Pleasures of the mind

Pleasures of the body

Inextricably intertwined

Buried in your grave

Nothing to fill the now hollow place

Where Logos and Eros once danced with delight

Night

Frieda Landau

I go to bed late, later than I should

Finding reasons to stay awake

Watching old movies in black and white

And playing endless solitaire

Or calling unseen friends overseas

Where the new day is almost half done

But friends, however dear, have their own lives

At last, in the grey light before dawn

When sleep overcomes all excuses

I face the desolation of an

Empty bed the rising sun cannot warm

Kol Nidre

Frieda Landau

How do you remember the unknown grandmother whose name and face you carry

Grandfathers fading into less than memory

Uncles, aunts, cousins, ghosts dissolving in the mists of time

The prayer for the dead a plea

Remember me when I am gone

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

Frieda Landau is a writer and a photographer, specializing in military topics. Landau was born during a postwar pogrom in Poland to Holocaust survivors 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.

Barry Gonen was born into a musical family in London in 1947. He left England for Israel in 1971 and has been a member of Kibbutz Negba since 1973. He taught English at Tsafit High School for thirty-two years, mostly in the Special Education department, also fulfilling other duties such as musical and security coordinator for the school. He also served in a Border Police Unit for many years and is still active as Security Officer for the Kibbutz on a voluntary basis. His many songs and voiceovers can be found on Facebook, My Space, Skype and YouTube.

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.

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.

Yiddish Illiterate

Mon, 02 May 2011 04:25:00 +0000

I’m sitting on a lawn chair in our backyard in Skokie, my relatives all ringed around me, the sun beating down on our heads, mottled through the leaves of the trees overhead. There’s a lot of boisterous conversation going on around me, but I sit there staring straight ahead, the idiot American granddaughter. They talk around me, over me, under me, like I’m a vegetable. I don’t understand a word they’re saying. They’re speaking Yiddish.

I’ve made a concerted effort not to learn Yiddish. For some reason, from the moment I hear it as a small child, I cast it off, decide it’s not for me, that it’s a relic of the Old Country. I resist Yiddish, fight its penetration into my brain tooth and nail. I give my mother a blank look when she tries to speak to me in it. I make her translate.

I give myself several reasons for my antagonism. First of all, I decide right off the bat that it’s a dead language, so there’s no reason to learn it. After all, only the grown ups around me speak Yiddish, none of the kids. I figure I can wait this thing out. I’ve also absorbed my parents’ desire to be American in all things, to cast off the Old World and embrace the new, and so I cast off the Old World’s Yiddish and embrace the New World’s English. Of course, they don’t mean to do that with language; they want to be able to speak to their children in their mother tongue. And, last of all, since Yiddish is used to hide everything interesting and tantalizing from me, I have a certain amount of hostility towards it.

My refusal to learn Yiddish causes some problems because one set of grandparents, my father’s parents, never learns English. They resist English as well as I resist Yiddish, eventually dying without letting a syllable touch their lips. And why should they learn it anyway? Yiddish serves all their needs; they commission their sons and daughters to learn English for them, to handle all their transactions with non-Yiddish-speaking merchants, to handle their communications with the outside world. These two grandparents of mine seem to know that it just might not be worth the time and effort to learn such an elaborate, messy and confusing language like English before they die.

My Dad’s parents are determined to spend their days in America relaxing and enjoying their new status as “senior citizens” in this new country, even if those days stack up together into years and even decades. They never get over the novelty of safety; never take it for granted. They never stop marveling at the amazing American innovations. The convenience of grocery stores - so much better than starving! The traffic signals on every street corner regulating the cars - so much better than cars and horses and wagons all insisting on going at the same time! The mild weather in Chicago compared to Poland and Siberia - a heat wave!

Just because I can’t speak Yiddish doesn’t mean that I can’t understand some of it. I do understand adjectives and imperatives and direct commands and reprimands. If my mother is mad at someone and decides to hurl an insult under her breath, I can understand that too, the goniffs, the schlimazels, the yachnehs. But the regular conversational ebbs and flows, the make up of ordinary sentences with nouns and verbs, that escapes me.

My other grandparents, my mother’s parents, learn English, my grandmother better than my grandfather. She understands every word I say; there’s no escaping her, tricking her, or pulling a fast one on her. She’s watching me all the days of my life with eyes magnified by her glasses and ears sharp with the nuances of five languages. All this while my grandfather sits nearby in a suit, his fedora always on his head, even inside the house, practicing the words he has just learned on me.

“Linda, mameleh, tell me again. Beetles are bugs, nu? Monkeys are animals. But now the Monkees and the Beatles sing songs on the radio? How can this be?”

Holocaust Memorial Day reminds me of my grandparents, all Survivors, and the Yiddish in our family, now long gone, so today I ran a blog post that is an excerpt from my book, Looking Up: A Memoir of Sisters, Survivors and Skokie, available on Amazon.

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 book, Looking Up: A Memoir of Sisters, Survivors and Skokie is available on Amazon and other venues. Her work has appeared in the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, in Brain Child Magazine, and has been anthologized in several works including Mizmor L'David, an anthology of work by children of Holocaust Survivors. She blogs at Bar Mitzvahzilla and on Open Salon.

Losing a Faith, Gaining a Faith

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 03:18:00 +0000

When I was five my grandmother read Grimm’s Fairy Tales to me. As a child I liked this and I loved when she read both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to me, especially the stories of Esther and Daniel, over and over again.

But there was a dark side to Grandma. Her religion. She really believed the world was going to end in nineteen eighty, and that the bulk of humankind was going to be cast into hell. At ten she began telling me about the fate of the damned, the Rapture, the False Christ and the False Prophet. And then, just when all the religions of the world were worshipping the false god, the devil, then the rapture would come. She told me, “Just before you’re about to die at the sword of the anti-Christ, God will intervene and those saved will go to heaven and the rest, all of the members of this false Church, will be cast into a lake of fire.” Sometimes she ended even more ominously, with a judgment about the fate of our family,“I don’t think all of us are going to make it to heaven,” she’d say.

As a Christian, I never really knew what to do with the scary, sadistic God of my imagination after that time. I had nightmares about God. I felt as though my faith was strangled in the crib.

Finally I left my faith when I was in college. Strangely enough, I was quite grief-stricken at my loss of faith. I felt desolate and found myself wondering things I never let myself think, “Was there a God? What kind of morality existed separate from religion? Did morality exist separate from it?”

As a child I was interested in Judaism. I don’t mean the Talmud, which I didn’t know existed; I mean Anne Frank’s diary. I pored over her diary; I was even in love with Anne’s boyfriend Peter, or thought I was. But then I saw the pictures of the victims of the Holocaust along with the tragic fate of Anne and her sister Margot. I had never seen or imagined such suffering. It was one of the early hints - before Grandma’s eschatology - of the dissatisfaction I had with the religion of my upbringing. Why had this been done?

At the same time, a good belief if unacted on, seemed meaningless. And yet I saw—or thought I saw—that you could believe in something fervently and yet do nothing. I struggled with this. I saw myself as evil. Finally I simply left. At the end of that semester I changed my religious affiliation to “Unitarian.” It would be a full year later when I decided to give Judaism a try.

Then, by luck or design, I found a copy of Spinoza’s Ethics. I started reading it and after classes were out I got my own copy of the work. His key insight to me was in understanding that human ethics benefit us in this life. I had never really thought of the practical nature of ethics. However, Spinoza occasionally came to weird conclusions in spots: he believed that cowardice was actually good because ‘bravery’ was liable to end in death. This was where I thought a Deistic way of understanding God made more sense: those who suffer unjustly in this life will have some sort of afterlife although I wasn’t always sure on this point.

Years later in Judaism, I found that the simple acting out of mitzvoth was therapeutic. I also made one decision early on for my sanity’s sake: I was not going to try to be Orthodox. It couldn’t be like back when my grandmother used to read me Grimm’s Fairy Tales; that I had to believe everything that was in her bible. I study the Bible but I don’t believe in all of it. When I was Christian, I felt like it had to be all or nothing. I never want to have my religion that way again.

Thanks for Reading JWorld Café,

Jennifer Alderson, Guest Blogger

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