Sestina Featuring Six Words Commonly Used On This Blog (by Rachel Barenblat)

I certainly wouldn't claim to be the best
though I suppose no one could quibble with "American"...
Either way, I'm here to share adventures
from the Berkshires, post by post,
happy to be blogging here, a guest
of our esteemed editors, recently abroad.

In just three weeks, I too will be abroad,
combing the streets of Jerusalem to find the best
coffee and tabouli, staying as a guest
in the apartment of an extpatriate American.
I hope for easy wifi in order to post
about Hebrew, psalms, syntax, adventures.

Rabbinic school, it turns out, contains adventures
on many levels. Sometimes I go abroad
without ever leaving this familiar post
at my piano-shaped desk, the best
place I know for spotting common American
fauna: wild turkeys, the woodchuck that's a guest

beneath our yew. Old Norse gestr is the root of "guest,"
akin to "stranger, enemy" -- what adventures
in vernacular! Our hilltop house sprawls, American
style. Where I grew up, the skies were a broad
canvas for thunderclouds, but here what's best
is how the mountains cradle us, a post-

pastoral fantasy. In this post
I aim to be the picture of a grateful guest.
Can I entertain y'all? I'll do my best,
I want to own both sides: adventures
and roots, the binary collapsed. The broad
brushstrokes that describe "American."

I ponder the implications of this American
life. Writing poems (be they modern or post-)
roots me whether I'm home or abroad.
Who would have guessed
that temporary blogs, these ad ventures,
would yield so much worth reading? Here the best

American poets gather, host and guest,
stringing lights between the posts of our adventures.
Whether home or abroad, I wish you all the best!

-- Rachel Barenblat

Comments

[Mitch Sisskind]

hi rachel -- what do you make of the incident of moses striking the rock (the second such incident) and his exclusion from entering the promised land? i'm fascinated by that passage and i want to devote as much time as possible to interpreting it. thanks for your contributions to this blog and i wish you the best in jerusalem!do you think you will go to safed?
mitch sisskind

[Rachel]

Hi Mitch -- It's a fascinating incident, and much rabbinic commentary has been devoted to it. One interpretation suggests that Moses' error was in striking the rock rather than speaking gently to it...which says to me that the real misdeed was the unnecessary violence, and the stance which presumed violence was necessary.

And thanks for the good wishes! I hope I'll make it to Safed (I was there once about ten years ago, but very briefly) -- then again, my academic schedule might keep me in Jerusalem, it's hard to know...

[DL]

I love the sestina, dear Rachel. And like Mitch I am fascinated by the incident of Moses striking the rock instead of speaking to it. My father felt it was the ultimate lesson in humility and proved the sinful nature of man: not even Moses was without blemish. But I always asked: What is a rock, or what does this particular rock stand for, that one should treat it so gently? I have imagined this episode as a dream and wondered where a Freudian analysis of such a dream would lead.