• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

CANADIAN JEWISH often associatedwith fire that "flare[s] yellow not- / especially-Jewish-touch WOMEN'S POETRY into snapshots and faint / record- I of a Modil." To arrive at that point ings and the tactile. ..." Carole she reaches back through a "long an- SOME MAJOR THEMES Lecher (1946) looks back "deep in cestral geography," wishing she could a frond of yesterdays." apprentice with a mystical Jew who byJanii Rapoport In Miriam Waddington's (1917- ) practises levitation as well as medita- "memory box" the strongest metaphor tion. Helene Rosenthal (1922- ) Poetry, ispmhaps, then is ofa green-finned fish who "prods the also connects her Jewishness to a only slumberingworldstowakcllness." For flower by its root. She is the out- a state of mind Anne Michaels (1958) memory, also growth of the "fierce blossoming" of that Icapjiom memory associated with water, ".. insists with her ancestors. to imagination its sea voice, / muttering fiom its bone Jewish identity for Donia -Miriam Mandel cave. / Memory wraps us / liithe shell Blumenfeld Clenman (1927- ) is in- wraps the sea." Memory is inscribed in tertwined with guilt as she lived "on .. a word is the memory of its the human body as well; organically, the edges of [the] Holocaust." meaning. above and beneath the earth and Clenman is still asking who she is, -Anne Michaels through time that is both geological does not yet know what ethics to and historical. embrace, what heritage to hllow. Jew- Memory is a means that empowers the In the poetry of Adeena Karasick ish heritage survives for Sharon Nel- written word: whether first recor-ded (1965- ) memory is Gactured, mir- son, but through "a smattering of old as a result of individual exper-ience or rored and refracted "as the memory tongues / disintegrating in the sub- more indirectly through family, soci- of memory /l is mimesis m€mes {the urbs / foreign to young ears." As late ety and oral or recorded history. Hebrew letter mem):" even the "In is as 1978 Miriam Mandel was writing For Rachel Korn (1898-1982) perceived as a resonating image of its about the concealment of her herit- memory is largely ofa fugitive past. If own memory. age and the fear of her Jewish identity any of its central elements still exist, being revealed. their connection to the present is .. where I lived Although "being born Jewish" ap- only by a single filament of a spider's my song pears as a line in a section of a poem web. The overtones are melancholy, -Miriam Waddington by Libby Scheier that begins "some tied into a dark knot while the narra- accidents that occurred yesterday:" tor can still evoke what in reality she Interpreted through contemporary her identity seems to be more con- acknowledgesis no longer there. Her linguistic theory, identity for Karasick nected with the body and the trans- happy recollections of childhood is celebrated through "this design ofa formation of the body through nega- learning are through the fragrance of sign // .. assigned to a sign // or this tive andlor positive experiences. wild poppies and ripening wheat, ayin {the Hebrew character ayin)": Rhea Tregebov (195 3- ) confesses tragically transformed into the char- the sounding of the first letter of her through her poetry, perhaps some- ring and smoke at Belzec and name in Hebrew. Her place is within what ironically, to being completely Maidanek. the Hebrew alphabet encoded in in love with herself and wants "to A blind alley is memory for Miriarn meanings, shapes, combinations of stop being wonderful." Although Mandel (1930-1 982) where the gar- letters and a system of signs. Her Tregebov sees herself as both a simple bage of the past is disguised/covered Jewishness is rooted in sound, regard- and (more) complex being, through up by images of traditional women's less of divisions among languages as her first name she identifies with ava- clothing of the 1920s and '30s. Such we know and use them: "jouisse- tars. In the present tense her clothing figures as well in the selec- mantics of de-sire, I am jewish. Je Jewishness is seen as a shadow; the tive memory of a narrator who in the joue jouir." The self is ".. always Jews of her past "... slotted them- work of Sharon H. Nelson (1948- ) virtual" and essentially "an inter- selves into streets named / Selkirk and journeys to a landscape that appears textatic syntacticism." Salter." to be perfect but from which much Through a more traditional ap- has been unconsciously deleted. proach Miriam Waddington identi- Italllies there, in the woven strandc Libby Scheier's (1946) memory, fies with Jews she describes as "soft of blood. in poetry, is emotion-centred and touches" and equates with "the soft1 -Rachel Korn VOLUME 16, NUMBER 4 As an extension of self perhaps, ceptions and, in time, role reversals, From Biblical images and narratives Rhea Tregebov has written at length Sharon Nelson examines the conflict Rachel Korn has drawn meaningful about her son, as has Libby Scheier. between mother and daughter twentieth-century analogies. Genesis Susan Glickman (1953- ) has writ- throughout her writing. In the midst is translated into a "somersaulting ten about infants and from the point of such turbulence, however, Nelson word," the bnning of a poem. The of view of young children. writes that her mother tells her to story of Lot's wife betomes a story of Virmally all the writers whose books "Stop cleaning your house: 1 Write exile for the one who didn't turn and are under consideration for this essay poems!" Through a series of rendered consequently didn't get to remain be- include the bittersweet aspects offam- snapshots, letters, telephone hind. And in sorrow her melancholy is ily life in their poetry. As described by conversations and visits both real and as long as Sarnson's hair. Jill Solnicki (1945- ): "we leave our imagined, Manyne Jenoff (1942- ) In her poem on Lot's wife, Miriam imprint on others: / their hyed edges, evokes the essence of an often strained Waddington transfers suffering, sen- their torn seams." Arguments some- daughter-mother relationship. suality and hope across centuries and times leave scars in Susan Glickman's Adeena Karasick displaces/decon- cultures, then loops them back again family poems when the only smiling structs the process of her mother's through the original story. Through is "in photographs and even there / dying in a language of "ciphered ac- identificationwith her Biblical name- someone's always out of focus." But cess" and "through the interstices / sake and the impact of that name- "it is {also}only parents who believe where interest is I about / the a b / a sake's younger brother the Prophet anyone / can be protected. /After all, way out / maybe." Moses, she parallels the history and that's their job." Carole Lecher per- For Anne Michaels, "My mother's geography of her own emigrant Rus- ceives other writers as her family: story is tangled, / overgrown with sian family. they spar like siblings, "fighting in lives of parents and grandparents / blood / ancient as the dawn." because they lived in one house and . fir I bring Europe i ghosts Donia Blurnenfeld Clenman writes among them / remembered hundreds into the well-lit living room tenderly and perceptively about a of years of history." Her central im- of CaMdian internatiortaIimt daughter's teenage years: "She is Jew- age for a family is that of "plate- ish, / Botticelli. / How far did you dip tectonics, flow-folding. / Something and I dream in good English too. into history / to paint my daughter?" inside shifts; suddenly we're closer or -Donia Blumenfeld Clenman And through an imagined dialogue apart." she manages to restore her Polish For Miriam Waddington there is a grandfather "in an ecstatic circle Dear Mama .. Noah's ark with more than animals dance." andpleae, next Pasover, in req- on a journey into exile. She dreams Phyllis Gotlieb's (1926 ) grand- uiem, oh "of new kingdoms / ... thrusting parents, for her, were "two faces of send me a mother? blessing, not a themselves / in a chorus of colour / despair. // .. {who) cultivated / in memo. from river to sky." the scoured yard of their love / a -Manyne Jenoff Testimony of displacement and garden of forget-me." Both love and exile-what Adeena Karasick would humour inform Robyn Sarah's Woven into the fabric of family call "memorexilen-is central to the (1949-) recollections of her grandfa- life, as with individual identity, are work of Rachel Korn, Donia ther: "in the hospital, settling his threads of Judaism manifested as as- Blumenfeld Clenman, Deborah Eibel account / with cancer, he replied / to pects of rituals, symbols, traditions (1940- ) and the early writing of all who inquired, 'I'm just / waiting and culture, and drawn from the Bi- Sharon Nelson. The hands ofa house- for avisa,' he would say. / 'Tell them, ble, folklore, myth and legend. Both maid away from home Rachel Korn I'm waiting for a visa.'" Miriam Waddington and Miriam compares to ".. oars / which row her Not surprisingly, among the most Mandel incorporate the sedm into life through / dark and steamy kitch- sentient poems are those concerning poems about faith. And Yom Kippur ens"; her new world "is tied in a mothers. In a poem of Miriam becomes a poem of conscience for thousand knots." Donia Blumenfeld Waddington's, "The Milk of the Donia Blumenfeld Clenman. The Clenman's Poland is "a blood clot Mothers" belongs to all who nurture, two strands ofa havdalahcandle form, around my heart" but also a country but its existence is endangered and for Sharon Nelson, "a single body // where certain plants are "spinning continually threatened by environ- a single / source / of light." Both the colour wheel of the universe." In mental abuse that can also be politi- Phyllis Gotlieb and Libby Scheier set Canada she puts "on the ointment of cally motivated.

Load more

  5

Copy Link