Many Amer­i­can Jews are unaf­fil­i­at­ed with Judaism. Some do not observe Jew­ish rit­u­als in any reg­u­lar way; oth­ers might not wor­ship at all. And yet Jew­ish­ness still per­vades their lives: in food, in atti­tude, in ways of speak­ing, and — of course — in that wry sense of humor that is marked by self-dep­re­ca­tion and a slight satir­i­cal impulse. What con­tem­po­rary poet speaks for those of us who do not know Yid­dish or Hebrew, who do not attend ser­vices, who eat BLTs, and who might even go shop­ping on Yom Kippur?

Enter poet Kim Dow­er, whose lat­est poet­ry col­lec­tion is a Jew­ish­ly infused valen­tine to her moth­er, to all moth­ers, and to ​“every­one who has a mother.” 

Ground­ed in an ear­ly mem­o­ry that func­tions as a warn­ing — ​“Don’t get used to this” — the title poem describes a Jew­ish iden­ti­ty that is almost assim­i­lat­ed but that nonethe­less pro­claims itself:

In Pacific Light, David Mason’s eighth collection of poems, we find the former Poet Laureate of Colorado newly settled in Tasmania, weighing the “titanic volumes of air” between “here and Patagonia” (“The Air in Tasmania”). In “On the Shelf”, which opens the new volume, the moulted skin of an Australian huntsman spider sparks recognition of a kindred sloughing.

What Small Sound, a new poetry collection by Francesca Bell, is an exploration of life, death, and love, and of the myriad ways these essential elements of human existence intersect and define each other. The poems in this collection don’t offer any easy answers to the quandaries we face, but they do look unflinchingly at the often painful contradictions that shape our experience of the world.

One of the central themes of the collection is connection with others: what it is, how we develop it, and how we just as often lose it.

Krueger offers a memoir about caring for a sick child in poetry form.

Krueger explores connections between flora, motherhood, and illness in this poetry collection. The title refers to the way different types and colors of flowers convey emotion: “Everyone speaks / a little flower,” she writes in “Floriography of a Birth.” She praises “the women before me” who “knew / which flowers were delicious, / which could heal” (“Heritage”). In “Sunflower,” three days after a birth, she takes the new child to the garden and tells her, “I grew this for you.”

What does it mean to heal your inner child? To overcome past trauma? To find the puzzle piece that had been lost years ago, or in another life? 

In a story in Pete Hsu’s short story collection, If I Were the Ocean, I’d Carry You Home, “Korean Jesus,” Hsu explains that the healing process means to be granted a wish, writing, “This second wish only comes to a few, just a few, and by just a few, I mean those few who didn’t wish for puppies and candy. I mean those few who wished for something else. Something desperate. Those are the few who sometimes come to be ready to be little again. You get me? To be little again. To be innocent again.” 

And what does it mean to be innocent?

Many Amer­i­can Jews are unaf­fil­i­at­ed with Judaism. Some do not observe Jew­ish rit­u­als in any reg­u­lar way; oth­ers might not wor­ship at all. And yet Jew­ish­ness still per­vades their lives: in food, in atti­tude, in ways of speak­ing, and — of course — in that wry sense of humor that is marked by self-dep­re­ca­tion and a slight satir­i­cal impulse. What con­tem­po­rary poet speaks for those of us who do not know Yid­dish or Hebrew, who do not attend ser­vices, who eat BLTs, and who might even go shop­ping on Yom Kippur? 

Enter poet Kim Dow­er, whose lat­est poet­ry col­lec­tion is a Jew­ish­ly infused valen­tine to her moth­er, to all moth­ers, and to ​“every­one who has a mother.”