Franz Wright Word from: Jake

I discovered Franz Wright and his poetry by accident: a galley fell on my lap, I opened it later on the subway - and transcended through the roof and past my stop. Apparently, others have had similar experiences, because last year the man received a Pulitzer Prize for his "Walking to Martha's Vineyard." His new book, "God's Silence" has just come out. It's an intensely lyrical work, focused mainly on - well, god's silences, all sorts of existential & religious moments, prayers, and meditations on death. Often minimalistic, terse, he works a lot with the graphic presentations of diction, creating a strong impression of speech - much of the time, the slow and pained kind. Bring it on! A lot of his work is online: Ploghshares, Poetry, NPR (sounds), Boldtype 1 and 2, WebDelSol, etc. By the way, don't confuse him with Charles Wright or James Wright. Though the latter is Franz's father who also won a Pulitzer back in his day. What a legacy! Imagine the pressure of Franz's kids (if he's got any.)

Paeans to Roller Word from: Jake

Aaron Roller, one the of the greatest luminaries, lamp-posts of the Mima'amakim circle is getting married today. On Sun, Mar 19^th we're swinging the "Love Songs of Alfred J. Prufrock and Aaron J. Roller" sheva brachot at the Caravan of Dreams with poetry and music. Drop by to say mazaltov and buy him a much-needed drink.

Can't help but reproduce Aaron's notoriusly self-prophesysing piece -

(which can be viewed here LIVE)

MY WIFE HAS A SECRET
Aaron Roller

My wife has a secret.
This demure Jewish girl with a skirt that sweeps the ground she walks on,
who shleps orange Glatt Mart bags full of Empire chickens down Avenue M,
who kicks me out of our bed in the morning so I get to shul on time,
who majored in OT at Touro so she could make her own hours,
who litters our Toyota with Torah tapes featuring rabbis who are "world renowned" because they've taught in Monsey and Bayit Vegan,
who recites ten chapters of Tehillim every week for the matzav in Israel,
who reads to me aloud from the Jewish Press on Friday nights,
who claims to make a better chulent than my mother, but not her own,
who drops her change into the cups of the beggars on Coney Island Avenue even though half aren't really Jewish and the other half aren't really poor,
who has wished both her Bubbes a Gut Shabbos every Friday afternoon since her year in seminary,
This wife of mine comes home at night, pulls off her wig and reveals a head dyed with bright pink Manic Panic-
And only me, her, the styrofoam head on our windowseat, and I guess the mikvah lady,
know about it.

Eve Grubin's "Morning Prayer" Word from: Jake

Eve Grubin's Morning Prayer came out a few months ago, in the middle of the subway strike; crisis notwithstanding, I was completely transported. Alright, this may not be the greatest pun ever, but, it is absolutely true that Eve's book blew me away. It took me over a month to read this thin debut collection - the work was too powerful to digest in large dozes. Basically, this is what we, Mima'amakim folk, term as the "Artistic Exploration of the Jewish Religious Experience" - for the first time, written on the really professional level. Poetry is top-notch, and rather than even trying to get into the detailed critique, I'll quote one of the back-cover blurbs, given by my favorite contemporary poet, Yusef Komunyakaa:

Eve Grubin has found "her own wildness" in Morning Prayer, her first book of poetry, and she has also teased a sober knowingness out of our twenty-first century wilderness. Without the slightest grandstanding, this wonderful young poet's old soul is hard at work, sure-eyed and determined to render a lyrical clarity that surprises and penetrates.

From my end, I'll offer one quick comment. Much of the Jewish religion-themed art (poetry, music, theater) of the past decade has been neo-chassidic - ecstatic, mysticism-wrought, rule-transcending, and sometimes, decadent in the shock effects of its conflicts. Eve's work, however, is much more akin to the "misnaged" approach: even her explosive leaps of religious passion are somehow paced, moderated; everywhere, there's the ambiance of the humble intellectual surrender to the laws. She's not interested in cheap shots of the shock-effect: this work is about the tremendous craft and endless arguments with the self, an internal beit midrash.

Speaking of the beit midrash, Eve is a fellow at Drisha this year. At the same time, she teaches creative writing at the New School and serves as the program director at the Poetry Society of America.

Some of her work is available online: see the Drunken Boat, UES, Virginia Quarterly Review, and LPZ.