Poetica Magazine

 

We are going to review books of poetry/prose/short stories 

on the Jewish theme by our published authors.

 

Please contact us

 before submitting your book for a review.

 

poeticamag@aol.com

 

 

June 2008

Book Review by Ricky Rapoport Friesem

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title: The Vast Unknowing

by Nancy Shiffrin

Worldwide Association of Writers (WWAOW)

Alpharetta, Georgia,USA

$14.00

 

 

 

Buckle up. Hold tight! Reading The Vast Unknowning is like riding the rollercoaster. It will plunge you into despair, exhilarate you, shake you to the depths of your being, terrify you, elate, disturb. And leave you weak kneed, dizzy, and delighted that you saw it through to a safe landing. A ride not to be missed.

 

Dr. Nancy Shiffrin earned her MA studying with the renowned author and diarist, Anais Nin. She earned her Ph.D at the Union Institute, studying Jewish-American Literature. Her work has won awards and honorable mentions from the Academy of American Poets, the Alice Jackson Foundation, the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prizes and the Dora Teitelbaum Foundation. In addition to her extensive writings which have appeared in numerous periodicals, she also runs Creative Writing Services, a literary arts consultancy for coaching aspiring writers.

 

In Song, the evocative, lyric poem which opens this 143 page book, Shiffrin avers: “I cannot release the song lodged in my throat.” But then she does just that. Her poems spit words in a staccato shorthand. For example, in Cindy’s Twig, a grim, contemporary take on the Cinderella tale, she writes: “…full moon sneering in window star-freckled sky”. Words as weapons, words as balm, sometimes words that puzzle, words that arouse. In her poem, Special Relativity, she writes: “… I hate stories of lost women calloused hands head stuck in ovens .I’d rather describe mornings on the highway ochre hills mauve peaks aroma of grape and anise” But she does both, conjuring up a gallery of women with a fierce, often painful, cynicism on the one hand and evoking lyric, soaring  images of nature on the other. Only in the section entitled “ My Jewish Education” does her brilliant incisiveness sometimes falter and create Woody Allen-like stereotypes. But perhaps this too was intentional.  

  

In her poem, At the Writer’s Retreat, Shiffrin quotes Anais Nin: "There are no writers’ blocks, only secrets we are afraid of telling." Nancy Shiffrin isn’t afraid. And no one will remain indifferent to the virtuoso power with which she reveals her secrets.

May 2008

Book Review by Ricky Rapoport Friesem

 

 

  

Title: I am a Jew

Author: Mel Waldman

Published in 2008 by

World Audience Inc

303 Park Av. S., #1440

New York, NY 10010-3657

$17.99

 

                                

Who Am I? One and

many – multiple faces

and identities…

 

Mel Waldman

                                                         

 

Mel Waldman is a passionate Jew, a tortured Jew, an erudite Jew, a questioning Jew, a believing Jew, an apostate Jew. Propelled by contradictions and an unrequited idealism, he records his ongoing spiritual odyssey in this haunting, sometimes uplifting, sometimes disturbing, and always intensely personal collection of essays, memoir, short stories, poems, and plays.

 

A New York State psychologist and a candidate in Psychoanalysis at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies, Dr. Mel Waldman is also a poet, writer, artist (he designed the cover of I am a Jew), singer/songwriter, and a member of the Mystery Writers of America. But above all, he is a Jew engaged in a quest -- wandering through the Jewish landscape, buffeted by Orthodoxy, secularism, mysticism, venturing out to explore atheism, agnosticism, but always returning to his Jewish heritage. Where he is, as he writes in his introduction, "trying to repair myself and the universe in the process of tikkun…"

 

Judaism and psychoanalysis are the warp and weft with which Waldman, often with great artistry, has woven the fabric of his work. Waldman describes his book as a "literary smorgasbord" of plays, poems, short stories, vignettes, and articles. He is a talented writer and as such, should take up courage and, next time, serve us 'a la carte', starting with a volume devoted to his poetry as the first course. In particular, his Jewish haikus are deceptively simple and incredibly profound, moving, and deserve a volume unto themselves.

 

Oh yes, and numbering the pages would help.