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JEWISH BOOK ANNUAL
was once associated with him, and in his series of experimental
poems “A” 1-12 he turns to his tradition through numerous
brief allusions. After referring to Passover and Deuteronomy
(site of the
mezuzah
commandment), he writes: “We prayed,
Open, God, Gate of Psalmody,” and goes on to examine Temple
walls and his own windows. Collocating histories, differences,
and walls, Zukofsky overlaps his family’s history and Jewish his
tory in general. Neighbors stopped at his grandfather’s windows
and leaned on the sills:
A voice out of the tabernacle
—
For the ark
Shittin wood
—
the acacia.
He asks whether New York’s skyline is a mist of Egypt, and
harks back to crossing the sea. In “A” 1-13 the poet extends
an invitation: “Come in, there are Gods here too / Don’t be
a stranger at the threshold.” To overcome estrangement, the
poet clings to a
mezuzah
of affiliation within a long tradition.
I f indeed formal religion plays a marginal role in the lives of
these poets, and if they in turn are peripheral to traditional
Judaism, then the threshold is an appropriate locus for dram
a tiz ing the tensions and tran s ition s o f a lapsed in te r
relationship.
JOHN HOLLANDER
John Hollander situates dramatic moments at various thresh
olds. “At the New Year” includes a “screeching ram’s ho rn”
before turning to a spatial equivalent of the changing year: “As
of every door in the world shutting at once / few dead leaves
shiver on our doorsteps.” Liminal shutting and shivering high
light mysteries of being for Hollander. “The Bird” from the
Yiddish of Moyshe Leyb Halpern reveals dialogue at a door,
while “The Fable of Bears in Winter” begins with an epigraph
from Buber’s
Ten Rungs
about the thief who breaks open the
lock of mystery. The poem ends with:
The sleeping bear is sweet to see.
But look you now how easily
The daw, the jaybird, or the egret
Picks the lock and breaks the Secret.