By Rabbie Rachel Esserman

In this column, I see myself not as a critic, but an educator. Those who love stories are always looking for new fiction to fulfil their never-ending desire for new experiences and I find works of which they may not be aware. Not all readers want to read the books – particularly scholarly works – themselves: they want to learn what a nonfiction work teaches and I try to supply that in my review. This means that I don’t normally review many books of poetry, since they depend so greatly on individual taste. Yet, periodically, I receive an e-mail that tempts me to ask for a book of poetry. In this case, it was “The Dove That Didn’t Return” by Yael S. Hacohen (Holy Cow! Press) that sounded intriguing. I already had a copy of Anna Goodman Herrick’s “A Speaker Is a Wilderness: Poems on the Sacred Path From Broken to Whole” (Monkfish Book Publishing Company) and thought the two books would complement each other. 

It’s impossible to write about Hacohen’s poetry without noting that she lives in Tel Aviv and was once a lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces. Those experiences inform her poetry, although her biography also notes that she received an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from universities in the U.S. She writes about her army service and daily life, using biblical and rabbinic themes to explain her world. While the meaning of every poem is not clear, the feelings underlying them will remain with readers.

Some of my favorites include:

• “Pillar of Cloud,” which talks about the experience of being drafted, including the fear of how you will react to all you must learn.
• “The Dove That Didn’t Return,” which speaks to the story of Noah’s Ark without mentioning his name. The poem offers the point of view of the dove, who won’t return to the ark after experiencing the silence of the post-flood world.
• “Moriah,” in which the author speaks to Isaac after the ram has been killed and wonders whether Isaac’s actions were a way of saying to Abraham, “This / was not what God had meant.” 
• An interesting version of David and his slingshot in “Goliath.” 
• A poem about “The Western Wall” that ponders whether “it’s a wall, / nothing more. / A place like any other place, / to bang my head against and pray.” 

Hacohen writes of soldiers and civilians dying from mortar fire, bombs or mines. But she also acknowledges the problems of building a state where others once lived. Whether or not one agrees with Hacohen’s point of view, her poems are powerful, making her a talent to watch.

Like Hacohen, Herrick speaks from personal experience, although her focus is more on personal traumas, rather than national ones. Her short biography includes the fact that she survived sexual assault in her teens and, after leaving home at 14, experienced different paths before reconnecting with Jewish tradition. Her poems are filled with mystical images as she writes about trying to find her way through the metaphorical wilderness she experienced during her life journey.

A few of her poems that spoke to me include:

• “Prayer for Rain,” where the author writes about the death of her brother when she was 7 and her inability at first to cry. 
• “The Whole Story,” a lovely poem about the need to learn to love. 
• “Rough Bark,” which, like the Mourner’s Kaddish, refuses to talk about death, even as it discusses the difficulties that occur when someone is dying. The author writes, “this is not a poem about a virus. this is a poem about the sunlight trembling through the curtains.”
• “Wonder,” which explores the fact that we continue to accept myths, even though we know they aren’t true. But Herrick understands the need “to believe what we also know isn’t true,” whether it is the sun setting or the stories we tell ourselves to survive.
• An exploration of family in “Shelter Pup” because the author knows “what is to be lost, and then found by the family you make.” 

The nuances of “A Speaker Is a Wilderness” will be best understood by those with some religious background, but all readers will find themselves experiencing the emotions Herrick describes. Her prefix – “How to Bless Yourself” – clearly shows what she has learned: “If you are waiting for a spiritual leader to tell you, / write what you need to hear / and read it back to yourself and call it a blessing. / Call the act of doing this a blessing. / Call yourself a blessing.”