A witty and formally versatile collection of poetry exploring life, faith, and history by the Witter Bynner Prize-winning poet.
With Dead Men’s Praise, Jacqueline Osherow gives us her fourth and most ambitious collection of poetry to date. Her hybrid inspiration ranges from Dante’s terza rima, to free verse, to biblical psalms, all delivered in a casually conversational voice. Combining the self-mocking inflections of Yiddish jokes with the pure lyric inspiration of biblical verse, these poems range in theme from Italian hill towns to contemporary art installations in Los Angeles to the vanished Jewish world of the Ukraine. Her effortless humor and sharp insights take us from imaginings of the future to recovery of the past, and her distinctive voice becomes a fusion of the sublime and the down-to-earth.
“Like Elizabeth Bishop, who wove her voice into a sestina so effortlessly you forget the form is there, Osherow makes villanelles, sonnets, and even Dante’s terza rima feel genuinely conversational.” —David Yaffe, The Village Voice
1102344923
With Dead Men’s Praise, Jacqueline Osherow gives us her fourth and most ambitious collection of poetry to date. Her hybrid inspiration ranges from Dante’s terza rima, to free verse, to biblical psalms, all delivered in a casually conversational voice. Combining the self-mocking inflections of Yiddish jokes with the pure lyric inspiration of biblical verse, these poems range in theme from Italian hill towns to contemporary art installations in Los Angeles to the vanished Jewish world of the Ukraine. Her effortless humor and sharp insights take us from imaginings of the future to recovery of the past, and her distinctive voice becomes a fusion of the sublime and the down-to-earth.
“Like Elizabeth Bishop, who wove her voice into a sestina so effortlessly you forget the form is there, Osherow makes villanelles, sonnets, and even Dante’s terza rima feel genuinely conversational.” —David Yaffe, The Village Voice
Dead Men's Praise
A witty and formally versatile collection of poetry exploring life, faith, and history by the Witter Bynner Prize-winning poet.
With Dead Men’s Praise, Jacqueline Osherow gives us her fourth and most ambitious collection of poetry to date. Her hybrid inspiration ranges from Dante’s terza rima, to free verse, to biblical psalms, all delivered in a casually conversational voice. Combining the self-mocking inflections of Yiddish jokes with the pure lyric inspiration of biblical verse, these poems range in theme from Italian hill towns to contemporary art installations in Los Angeles to the vanished Jewish world of the Ukraine. Her effortless humor and sharp insights take us from imaginings of the future to recovery of the past, and her distinctive voice becomes a fusion of the sublime and the down-to-earth.
“Like Elizabeth Bishop, who wove her voice into a sestina so effortlessly you forget the form is there, Osherow makes villanelles, sonnets, and even Dante’s terza rima feel genuinely conversational.” —David Yaffe, The Village Voice
With Dead Men’s Praise, Jacqueline Osherow gives us her fourth and most ambitious collection of poetry to date. Her hybrid inspiration ranges from Dante’s terza rima, to free verse, to biblical psalms, all delivered in a casually conversational voice. Combining the self-mocking inflections of Yiddish jokes with the pure lyric inspiration of biblical verse, these poems range in theme from Italian hill towns to contemporary art installations in Los Angeles to the vanished Jewish world of the Ukraine. Her effortless humor and sharp insights take us from imaginings of the future to recovery of the past, and her distinctive voice becomes a fusion of the sublime and the down-to-earth.
“Like Elizabeth Bishop, who wove her voice into a sestina so effortlessly you forget the form is there, Osherow makes villanelles, sonnets, and even Dante’s terza rima feel genuinely conversational.” —David Yaffe, The Village Voice
11.49
In Stock
5
1
eBook
$11.49
$14.99
Save 23%
Current price is $11.49, Original price is $14.99. You Save 23%.
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?
Explore Now
Related collections and offers
LEND ME®
See Details
11.49
In Stock
Overview
A witty and formally versatile collection of poetry exploring life, faith, and history by the Witter Bynner Prize-winning poet.
With Dead Men’s Praise, Jacqueline Osherow gives us her fourth and most ambitious collection of poetry to date. Her hybrid inspiration ranges from Dante’s terza rima, to free verse, to biblical psalms, all delivered in a casually conversational voice. Combining the self-mocking inflections of Yiddish jokes with the pure lyric inspiration of biblical verse, these poems range in theme from Italian hill towns to contemporary art installations in Los Angeles to the vanished Jewish world of the Ukraine. Her effortless humor and sharp insights take us from imaginings of the future to recovery of the past, and her distinctive voice becomes a fusion of the sublime and the down-to-earth.
“Like Elizabeth Bishop, who wove her voice into a sestina so effortlessly you forget the form is there, Osherow makes villanelles, sonnets, and even Dante’s terza rima feel genuinely conversational.” —David Yaffe, The Village Voice
With Dead Men’s Praise, Jacqueline Osherow gives us her fourth and most ambitious collection of poetry to date. Her hybrid inspiration ranges from Dante’s terza rima, to free verse, to biblical psalms, all delivered in a casually conversational voice. Combining the self-mocking inflections of Yiddish jokes with the pure lyric inspiration of biblical verse, these poems range in theme from Italian hill towns to contemporary art installations in Los Angeles to the vanished Jewish world of the Ukraine. Her effortless humor and sharp insights take us from imaginings of the future to recovery of the past, and her distinctive voice becomes a fusion of the sublime and the down-to-earth.
“Like Elizabeth Bishop, who wove her voice into a sestina so effortlessly you forget the form is there, Osherow makes villanelles, sonnets, and even Dante’s terza rima feel genuinely conversational.” —David Yaffe, The Village Voice
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780802196729 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
Publication date: | 02/26/2020 |
Series: | Grove Press Poetry Series |
Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 96 |
File size: | 18 MB |
Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Jacqueline Osherow directs the creative writing program at the University of Utah.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Ch'vil Schreiben a Poem auf Yiddish
I want to write a poem in Yiddish
and not any poem, but the poem
I am longing to write,
a poem so Yiddish, it would not
be possible to translate,
except from, say, my bubbe's
Galizianer to my zayde's Litvak
and even then it would lose a little something,
though, of course, it's not the sort of poem
that relies on such trivialities, as,
for example, my knowing how to speak
its languagethough, who knows?
Maybe I understand it perfectly;
maybe, in Yiddish, things aren't any clearer
than the mumbling of rain on cast-off leaves....
Being pure poem, pure Yiddish poem,
my Yiddish poem is above such meditations,
as I, were I fluent in Yiddish,
would be above wasting my time
pouring out my heart in Goyish metaphors.
Even Yiddish doesn't have a word
for the greatness of my Yiddish poem,
a poem so exquisite that if Dante could rise from the dead
he would have to rend his clothes in mourning.
Oh, the drabness of his noisy,
futile little paradise
when it's compared with my Yiddish poem.
His poems? They're everywhere. A dime a dozen.
A photocopier can take them down in no time.
But my Yiddish poem can never be taken down,
not even by a pious scribe
who has fasted an entire year
to be pure enough to write my Yiddish poem,
which existsdoesn't herealize?
in no realm at all
unless the dead still manage to dream dreams.
It's even a question
whether God Himself
can make out the text of my Yiddish poem.
If He can, He won't be happy.
He'll have to retract everything,
to re-create the universe
without banalities like firmament and light
but only out of words extracted
from the stingy tongues of strangers,
smuggled out in letters made of camels,
houses, eyes, to deafen
half a continent with argument
and exegesis, each refinement
purified in fire after
fire, singed almost beyond
recognition, but still
not quite consumed, not even
by the heat of my Yiddish poem.
Views of La Leggenda della Vera Croce
How will I ever get this in a poem,
When all I have to do is type AREZZO
And the name sidles up along a station platform,
The train I'm riding in begins to slow,
Andthough I swore I wasn't getting off this time
I know a train comes every hour or so
To wherever I'm headedPerugia? Rome?
And suddenly I'm rushing off the train,
Depositing my bag, crossing the waiting room,
And striding up the Via Monaco again
As if I couldn't see each fresco perfectly,
Couldn't see them, now, against this screen....
But in a minute, they'll array themselves in front of me:
Soldiers, horses, placid ladies, kings,
All patient, in their places, not spinning crazily
Like the first time I saw them: unearthly beings
Breathing luminous pearl-green instead of air,
Horses and ladies-in-waiting flapping wings
Stolen from the eagle on the soldiers' banner,
Their brocaded sleeves and bridles grazing spinning walls,
Hats twirling, armor flying, coils of hair
Unraveling into whirling manes and tails
And that was before the winged arm's appearance....
When the Times ran an article about Stendhal's
Famous nervous breakdown from the art in Florence,
Half a dozen friends sent it to me.
I suppose these tales of mine require forbearance.
Not that I had a breakdown, though I was dizzy,
Closed my eyes, leaned against a wall,
And told myself that there was time to see
Each panelone by onedown to each detail:
Hats, sleeves, daggers, saddles, bits of lace;
I studied every panel: Adam's Burial,
St. Helena's Discovery of the Cross,
Solomon Meeting Sheba, The Annunciation,
The Dream of Constantine, The Torture of Judas,
Whose other name I learned from a machine
Which, with the help of a hundred-lire coin,
Supplies a telephone with information.
I did it for a laugh; I chose Italian.
I thought I heard the torture of the Jew
And was so stunned I played the thing again
(My Italian was, after all, fairly new
And the woman on the tape spoke very quickly
But she did say the torture of the Jew
In Italian it's ebreoquite matter-of-factly)
The torture of the Jew who wouldn't reveal
The location of the true crossI got it exactly
Put in a lot of coins to catch each syllable
(I also heard the English, which said Judas),
All the while not looking at the rope, the well;
Instead, I chose a saintly woman's dress,
An angel's finger pointing to a dream,
A single riveting, incongruous face
What was I supposed to do? They were sublime.
The Inquisition wasn't exactly news
And, while I did keep my eyes off that one frame,
I wasn't about to give up on those frescoes.
In fact, I saw them again, a short while after
And again soon afterin those heady days,
Trains cost almost nothing and a drifter
Gould easily cover quite a bit of Italy,
Though I tended to stay in Tuscany. The light was softer,
Andprobably not coincidentally
It had a higher density than any other place
Of things that could dazzle inexhaustibly.
And I was insatiable, avaricious
For whateven asleepa person can't see
From a slim back bedroom in a semidetached house
Like every other house in its vicinity
On a site whose inhabitants had been wiped out
To make room for spillover, like my family,
From the very continent I would have dreamed about
If I'd had even an inkling of the mastery
Of what its subtlest inhabitants had wrought
When they weren't doing away with people like me....
See how Solomon, listening, leans his head?
How the tired horseman leans against a tree
How the guard beside the emperor's makeshift bed
Can't resist the sorcery of sleep
So only we can catch the angel's finger pointed
At the dreamer's head, the horse's sudden leap,
As if straight from that vision, to the battle scene:
Christianity's triumph over Europe....
I love the wing, the arm, the dreaming Constantine,
The moonlight casting shadows on the tent
It is moonlight, though there is no moon
Pale, as always, silvery and slant;
It's coming from the angel's pointing arm
Which I didn't even notice that first moment
All I saw was undiluted dream
I didn't really care what it was for
Besides, we fared no better under pagan Rome,
Which hadn't stopped me from going there
I might not even have thought about Jerusalem,
If I hadn't found myself staring straight at her.
I was wandering lazily around the Forum
Without even a guidebook or a map.
I didn't care which stones were the gymnasium,
Which pillars hunched together, needing propping up,
Paid tribute to which boastful, scheming god.
Amazing, I suppose, that all that stuff could keep
The advantage of stone, I guess, over mud and wood
But the things I like best are always beautiful;
I don't admire antiquities as I should,
I lack the imagination for them. Still,
In my own haphazard way, I was thorough;
I did cover everything, though I'd had my fill,
Walked through every arch, every portico,
Andtherein the middle of the Roman Forum
Was my own first menorah, stolen years ago,
My altar, carved with rams' horns on its rim
(If you want to find them, they're on the Arch of Titus,
On your right, as you face the Colosseum;
Splendid reliefs, the Blue Guide says;
It's the only arch acknowledged with a star)
Soldiers were parading them, victorious,
Transporting themif only I knew where....
What was I doing at these celebrations,
When I'd fasted over this, year after year,
Chanting the entire book of Lamentations
In candlelight, sitting on the floor?
How she's become as a widow, that was great among nations ...
The torture of the Jew couldn't compare.
After all, wasn't it a work of fiction?
This was actual footage from a war
Which had always beenforgive mean abstraction,
Despiteor because of?.all the people killed
Trying to save the Temple from destruction,
The few survivors forced to watch as every field
Around Jerusalem was plowed with salt,
Then brought to Rome in chains, for all I knew to build
This very chronicle of their defeat.
Still, if you take the long view, here I am
And Titus isn't anywhere in sight.
Besides, I'd hate to sacrifice a ram
Or whatever's requiredbullock, turtledove
I much prefer the chance to chant a psalm
When I need a quick, relatively foolproof, salve
Or have managed to entangle myself yet again
In a muddle only God would ever forgive.
(Like this breeziness about the Temple's destruction,
This complete inability to feel its loss,
Not to mention my ridiculous and total passion
For Piero's Legend of the True Cross,
The way Jerusalem is most alive to me
When it looks just like Arezzo in his frescoes.)
It's not a matter of faiththough it should be
But the chance to infiltrate with my own voice
All that unadulterated majesty.
Don't be too shocked, I'm often blasphemous;
It's a deal I have with God; at least I pray.
Though He may have a planI'm not impervious
In which I'm expected to wake up one day,
Go to synagogue, recite the psalms,
And convince myself with every word I say.
Beggars can't be choosers; these are godless times;
Let Him hold on to His illusions.
Besides, maybe I do have a few qualms
About my persistent heretical allusions
To Someone who isafter alla Deity....
You'll find I'm a jumble of confusions.
Besides, I'm not sure God much cares for piety;
My guess issince David was His favorite
That He's partial to passion, spontaneity,
And likes a little genuine regret.
True, David lost his ill-begotten child
But what did the pious ever get?
Unless you buy that dictum in the Talmud
That the reward for the commandment is the commandment
In which case, nothing's ever withheld,
But that may not be what the rabbis meant.
And who am I, at the end of a mangled century,
To talk about God, reward, and punishment?
Especially from this vantage point, in Italy
And that's where we are, gaping, in Arezzo
Though there are lots of places we could be:
Florence, Santa Maria Novella, the piazza
Where they rounded up the Jews to ship them east ...
Or reading some well-known facts about matzoh
In a just-published newspaper in Bucharest
(How it must contain the blood of Christian children);
Or even at a swim meet, as Europe's finest
Actually do a synchronized routine
About the Nazis and the Jews and win the cup.
Why not Ostia Antica, in the ruin
Of the oldest known synagogue in Europe?
Go yourself, take the Rome Metro, Linea B;
Otherwise, you'll think I'm making this up.
They found it building a road in 1960.
At first it looks like any Roman basilica:
Columns with ornate capitals, a stairway,
And then you notice bits of Judaica
On some of the columnslulav, etrog, shofar
And, after a while, looking down, the swastika
Patterned in the black-and-white mosaic floor
I know, I know, it was an obvious design:
Bold, easy to lay out; you see it everywhere
But to me, it's a harrowing premonition:
We should never have set foot on such a continent;
How could we have failed to see this omen,
Which, even in retrospect, will not look innocent
Of what it would inevitably mean?
As if no Jewish building on the continent
Not even under layers of earthescaped that sign,
But, still, it's third century (let's call it C.E.
Since my Lord is, after all, an older one)
And therecarved in the marble, for all to see
Are a few of my most beloved eccentricities:
The shofar, with its desperate cacophony,
And the etrog and lulavpure frivolities
Of gathered citron, willow, myrtle, palm,
Shaken in the air to jumbled melodies
Of a congregation belting out a psalm,
Then circling the room chanting hosanna.
Call it piety. Call it delirium
Citron, willow, myrtle, palm, hosanna
No one's even certain what they mean,
Unless it's sheer loveliness, sheer stamina
Some say the citron's a heart, the palm branch, spine,
The willow leaf's two lips, the myrtle, eye
(Does every group of plants concoct a human?)
But this came after the commandmentsome rabbi,
Improvising, finding similarities,
But I say God devised it purely whimsically
(And ye shall take you ... the fruit of goodly trees,
Branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick
Trees and willows of the brook), merely to tease
The solemn air in which they were to frolic....
Maybe God prefers synagogues as I do:
Dismantled, as in Ostia, bucolic,
A few columns and mosaics in a meadow,
The grass and weeds so high you think you're lost.
He can slip out, that way, incommunicado;
One day in seven isn't enough rest.
Not that I claim to understand His ways
I'd fail, if He put me to a test
Of anything but willingness to praise
But still, I would think the UJA
Or World Jewish Congress would be able to raise
Enough funds to pave a little pathway
From the rest of Ostia Antica to the synagogue....
For older people, for instance, it's a long way
(Since, as usual, the local Roman demagogue
Banned synagogues within the city wall)
And some of them might be cheered to see an etrog,
A lulav, a shofar on an ancient capital,
The way, when I'm standing on the bimah,
Chanting ancient columns from a scroll
And come to, say, They called the place Be'er Sheva
And so we call it to this very day,
I feel a kind of wild reverse amnesia,
Having forgottenand suddenly rememberedall eternity,
Proof, beneath my narrow silver pointer,
That there will be no end to this very day....
But I'm forgetting the swastikas on the floor,
The distance from town, the torture of the Jew,
The roundup in Florence, the Judean war,
Who Italy's allies were in World War II
Before their final-hour about-face,
Howif you make your way to Urbino,
To enter the double turrets of the palace
That looks like something Piero once dreamed up
To house his enigmatic masterpiece
(The Flagellation, the reason for your trip)
You will also have to forget the Paolo Uccello.
Or walk right by it. Don't even stop.
Don't let the helpful guide attempt to show
The beauty of its composition, frame by frame,
How the tiny golden circle that appears to glow
Between the stately woman's finger and thumb
Is the sacred hoststolen from the altar
Purchased by a Jew for a hefty sum;
How the red stream, in the next frame, on the floor
Is blood from the host burning in his fireplace
As soldiers with spears and axes throng his door.
One child sobs, one grabs his mother's dress;
The blood has seeped outside, through stone and mortar
And into the next frame's version of the stateliness
Of a clerical procession to the altar:
Incense. Psalter. Cross. The Host Returned.
Next, the woman, out in a field somewhere,
Is met by an angel and ... what? forgiven? warned?
Before the soldiers hang her from a tree....
Then the Jew, with wife and children, is burned;
The flames near one child's head, the other's knee
(All four are tied together to the stake).
But we don't see the Christian woman die;
In the final frame she's on a catafalque,
A pair of devils grabbing at her feet
For what the angels, at her head, will not forsake
Without at least putting up a fight.
(My money's on the angels, but it's close.)
The guide calls it Uccello's greatest insight
To leave us with something so ambiguous
A spiritual struggle ... iniquity.
You see, I didn't heed my own advice;
I actually asked the guide to tell the story,
And a crowd gathered round to listen in.
No one blinked an eyelash but me....
Perhaps they didn't notice the children
Burning, in that fifth frame, at the stake....
It is, after all, a nighttime scene;
The Jew is wearing red, the children, black.
Besides, in Europe, burning Jewish children
Aren't all that difficult to overlook,
What with the complex struggle over sin
And so much never-ending beauty
And even I, who see them, still take in
The two Pieros, the Raphael, the ideal city
Which unreal Urbino still resembles....
Is there anything more despicable than ambiguity?
How could I not have left the palace in shambles?
Or, at least, burned the painting publicly?
I'm not interested in symbols
With two breathing boys right in front of me
Burning with their parents on a palace wall
For anyone who comes along to see
Or, rather, not seesince they're invisible
To all but specially trained eyes.
Tie a rope around me. Throw me in a well;
I'm sick of this unnatural disguise.
Sick of turning away. Sick of everything.
I needas in Arezzoto close my eyes,
To stop these flames and likenesses from spinning
From the painted to the identical real landscape,
But it's worse with my eyes closed; now they're careening
Around my tight-shut eyelids' burning map
That red you get when you shut your eyes in sunlight
Consuming the entire extent of Europe
A continent notoriously profligate
Of knees, heads, fingers, elbows, thighs.
Wasn't this Uccello's greatest insight:
That if you gradually habituate the eyes
They will be capable of watching anything?
I wonder if this came to God as a surprise.
Could He actually have known about this failing
And still gone ahead with our creation?
You can't, after all, have everything;
We're pretty good at visual representation,
Not to mention all those people who could sing
And care for sheep while arguing with a vision....
He's certainly done His share of watching
And nonetheless managed to survive.
Unless He hasn't. But I'm not touching
That one. Besides, when you work out how to live
Your one puny life on this unnerving earth,
It's so much more appealing to believe
In some strategic artistry, some worth,
As if bitterness were a fleeting misconception.
I do have a fondness for the truth
But am willing to make, in this case, an exception,
Which has been, more or less, my people's way.
We've learned to be remarkable at self-deception
What with the Messiah's long delay....
Just look at the Jew in the fresco in Arezzo,
Why have I avoided him until today?
Clearly he's faking itthe first Marrano
(According to the legend he's accepting Jesus)
That's not how rapture looks to Piero;
The over-the-top bliss is preposterous.
The Jew was probably desperate to get dry....
He hasn't got a clue about the location of the cross;
He can't even manage his own inventory.
Where's his holy ark? his candelabrum?
Why are these bits of ash dredging the sky?
Where's his citron, willow, myrtle, palm?
What's that splinter in his upturned eye?
Table of Contents
I | |
Ch'vil Schreiben a Poem auf Yiddish | 3 |
Views of La Leggenda della Vera Croce | 5 |
II | |
Phantom Haiku/Silent Film | 21 |
Sonnet | 23 |
Lean Sonnet | 24 |
Ghazal: Comet | 25 |
Analfabeta | 26 |
New Tanager/New Song | 29 |
Yom Kippur Sonnet, with a Line from Lamentations | 34 |
Villanelle from a Sentence in a Poet's Brief Biography | 35 |
Site of the Jewish Cemetery, Raciaz, Poland | 36 |
A Footnote for Perets Markish | 37 |
III | |
Scattered Psalms | 51 |
I (Handiwork/Glory) | 51 |
II (Pure Silver/Seven Times) | 53 |
III (Thrones and Psalms) | 55 |
IV (Darkness/Wings) | 57 |
V (Psalm 37 at Auschwitz) | 60 |
VI (SuddenMichtam) | 65 |
VII (Michtam/Dove/Distant Silence) | 69 |
VIII (At the Galleria dell'Accademia: Psalm 51) | 73 |
IX (Looking through the Window: Psalm121) | 76 |
X (SNOW PSALM, TO THE CONDUCTOR, ON JONATH ELEM REHOKIM) | 78 |
XI (Dead Men's Praise) | 79 |
XII (Science Psalm) | 84 |
XIII (Space Psalm) | 88 |
IV | |
One Last Terza Rima/Italian Train | 91 |
From the B&N Reads Blog
Page 1 of