Two Poets, One Book Jacket [by Nin Andrews]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are the odds that two of your favorite poets who don’t know each other--one, an award-winning Arab poet, and the other, an award-winning Jewish poet and the founder of Yetzirah--would choose the same artwork for the cover of their books? And not just a familiar image, but an image taken the Japanese artist, Chiharu Shiota’s exhibition The Key in the Hand?  

In an inspiring article in Image the poets, Philip Metres and Jessica Jacobs, discuss this odd coincidence, the impact of Shiota’s art on their work, and the surprising connections between their books and their thought processes.

In the opening of the article, Metres states: Given this moment we’re in, the racial hatred against Jews and Arabs in this country, the nightmarish killings in Israel and Gaza, the terrible loneliness felt by so many of us (especially Jews and Arabs), I suppose that’s what I’m hungering for—to connect, to see that we are not doomed to separation and strife, that we are not alone at all.

Both books are moving, eloquent, profoundly spiritual collections of poetry. While Metres writes the story of the immigrant, the refugee, the exiled members of society, Jacobs, a master of Midrash, delves into the book of Genesis, using it as a portal into her own psyche and the psyche of the world, or perhaps what Paul Tillich called the ground of being. 

ALIYAH

by Jessica Jacobs

Blessed are you, God our God, Sovereign of the World, who has
given us the Torah of truth, planting within us life everlasting.
—Prayer recited during an aliyah, “a going up” to read from the Torah.

Let me speak to you as the tree I climbed as a child,
the one in the far corner of my grandmother’s yard,
whose bark was a tapestry of rough diamonds.
Your first branch was low enough to leap to,
textured enough to hold me. And each branch after
placed as though to keep me climbing.
I paused only to press my ear to your trunk
and hear it: the heartbeat of water
moving toward the leaves, the conversation
between roots and sky. Climbing until my hair
twined your needles’ spines; until, anointed
by your green, you took root within me; so I speak
from the part of me who grows you, grows
with you, who will always live in your branches.
And in the boughs, so many there with me.
A vantage we could not have reached
on our own, a vision otherwise beyond us.
All of us, in that overstory, unalone.

Devotional (after a Muslim Prayer)

by Philip Metres

Light my face and light the flesh of my flesh,
Light each my eyes and light inside my sight,
Light the light that makes me light in the bones,
And in my hands, light, and in my loins, light,

And light your light before and behind me,
Above and beneath me, light to my right
And light to left, light to my enemies
Who in the moral dark will use my light

Against me, light the dull swords of my ribs,
The thick fist within, light the blood-hot rooms
Pulsing there, light the gates when they swing wide
To the stranger, light more light on my tongue,

In the light, light more light, in the black, light,
and when it's time to snuff this wick—light that light.

Comments

[Denise Duhamel]

Wow! Thanks, Nin. These poems--by two fantastic poets--are beautiful.

[John Koethe]

I have a similar cover coincidence. In 2006 HarperCollins was going to publish a book of mine, "Sally's Hair." I asked for a simple graphic design with block letters in yellow and blue, and sent them a copy of Elizabeth Bishop's 1969 "Complete Poems" to show them the colors I had in mind. Instead of just the colors, they basically copied the whole design of Bishop's cover. They refused to change it, so I decided to just think of it as an homage to her.

[Yahia S. Lababidi]

Reading these, near tears... Thank you, Nin, Phi & Jessica for reminding us of our higher allegiances to the human family & how we suffer when we forget that we belong to each other.

As a poet of Palestinian background, here is my small contribution to Peace: a conversation, in verse, with Jewish poet, Olga Stein, about Israel/Palestine and our shared humanity:

https://wordcitylit.ca/2024/03/07/conversation-olga-stein-and-yahia-lababidi/

May it soften hearts..
Yahia

[Summer Brenner]

Thank you, Yahia Lababidi and Olga Stein for your conversation in verse. To soften is to grow stronger, a principle of tai chi.