Poetica Magazine

When we left America for Israel 38 years ago, my three sons were far from thrilled with the move, to put it mildly.

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Try to look at it as an adventure," was my standard reply during that first year when the complaints were constant, "and besides, think of what an interesting autobiography you can write some day," I'd add dismissively.

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Almost four decades later, my kids have yet to write, while I, on the other hand, find that the displacement from a familiar culture and the adjustment to a strange new one propel much of my writing. I see America through the eyes of an Israeli, and Israel through the eyes of an American. On a good day, I call it perspective. On a bad day, alienation. No matter how I look at it, I will always be between two worlds.

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In my latest poetry collection, Laissez-Passer, there is a section entitled, "Back to the USA". The opening poem reflects my ambivalence:

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Oh America I loved you,

Love you still but I can't stay.

Gone too long and seen too much

To fit into the USA.

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Other poems in the section echo the commercial chatter that assaults my (foreign) ears: Small medium or large morning? Extra milk or sugar morning? (from Morning USA) or Toys 'R Us ,'Tis of Thee Just Do It! Land of Liberty (from America the Beautiful).

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Would I have been as sensitive to this commercial bombardment had I remained in America? I doubt it. Do I think Israel rises above this banal banter? Of course not. But from my perspective, with a foot in both worlds, I am intensely aware of the creeping Americanization of Israel and of what we in Israel are losing in the bargain.

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As an occasional visitor to the USA it's not only the commercialization of the language that catches my attention. It's the language itself. Are Americans jolted by the pervasiveness of 'awesome' or the disappearance of ' whom', I wonder? In the English I spoke when I left America in 1972, for example, we didn't 'grow' companies, we developed them. When I read TIME magazine or other foreign papers, I regularly find words or expression that I don't understand. What does that mean for my writing? Will I lose touch with my American audience?

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But absence and distance also benefit my writing. As I 'zoom out' from the American comfort zone and look at US society from my Israeli vantage point, I see clearly the optimism and the naïveté of Americans; the "yes we can" which is a new phrase for the prevailing American attitude that the world can be changed for the better, that problems always have solutions. (Although, admittedly this bright optimism has been tarnished of late) .

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I am no longer convinced. After four decades of living in a war zone, fed on promises of peace and swallowing endless disappointments, I have become a skeptic; sometimes determined, sometimes in despair, always in turmoil, and my writing shows it.

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Walls

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‘We’ll build a wall’

they say.

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‘They’ being those who know.

The generals

who first declared

we’d have to live together

side by side,

and trust the others

to behave like us.

Or like we’d like to be, that is.

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And now ‘They’ say

it’s better to build walls

that separate

and keep us out of range

of rage unbridled

and the lust for blood

set free.

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But no one listens now

because we’ve learned

that walls cannot contain

the fury

any more than words can

realize

the dream.*

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Had I stayed in America, would I have written these lines? No way.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Cafe, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Ricky Rapoport Friesem, Guest Blogger

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Ricky Rapoport Friesem is a poet and documentary filmmaker. She has  written two cook books: Fruits of the Earth (Adama Books, 1985) and Joy of Israel (Steimatzky, 1976). In 2007, her first poetry collection, Parentheses, was awarded First Prize in Writer's Digest 2007 International Self-Published Book Awards . Her 2nd collection, Laissez-Passer was published in October, 2009. Visit her website. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

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     * First published in Moment, April 2003, subsequently included in Parentheses,

       Kipod Press 2006