#Yosefa Raz

[inhernature]

Last Dance

By Sheikha Hlewa

Translated by Yosefa Raz

O Stranger,

I am pulling you onto the noisy dance floor but you

bite half moons around your fingernails.

The waiter asks: is this how they dance in your country?

You say: no. This is how they walk on water. 

You tell him how you switched places with a barren tree

how you stayed silent when they pierced your flesh with lost dog signs, 

how you injected blue ants in your veins.

And I remind you: when you prayed standing on your head 

shipwrecked letters came crumbling from your nose. 

O Stranger, 

I hold your hand and lead you under the victory arch. 

You tickle yourself under your armpits and laugh at the passers-by:

In my land they line the eyes of kids with kohl against the evil eye

until the planes return with glad tidings in their belly. 

In my land men leave sticky threads on the thighs of women

a moment before leaving for a final battle, 

and here you make love on the sidewalks

and die at crosswalks on fancy boulevards.

O Stranger, 

Let’s buy a “double espresso”

drink it near the bridge and talk “small talk,” 

we’ll find synonyms for hidden cellars and messianic arrivals. 

You will whisper to the bridge:

My mother burned the books I left behind 

and fed an old battle survivor and the neighborhood cats

with the cooking water. 

She feared the heresies of the written word 

and I grew bewildered by the interpretation of bridges.  

O Stranger, let me write you a homeland. 

— No. In the hell that I wrote, all the homelands

burned in the last chapter. 

(Source/Poem Source)

Sheikha Hlewa (شيخة حليوى) was born in Dhayl ‘Araj, an unrecognized Bedouin village near Haifa. Now living in Jaffa, she is a lecturer on Arab feminism at Ben Gurion University. Her short story collection, The Order C345 (C345 الطلبيّة), published in 2018, won the best short story book award in the Arab world 2019–2020. Her work has been translated into Hebrew, German, French, and Bulgarian. 

Yosefa Raz is a poet, translator, and scholar. Her work has recently appeared in Entropy,Jacket2, Guernica, Protocols, the Boston Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her scholarship is focused on the often fraught transformation of prophecy into poetry. She is a lecturer in the Department of English Language & Literature at the University of Haifa.

[et-excrucior]

i too seal off

passages to my heart like a beseiged country,

cut losses, cut brothers, don't look back

when i am lost in the forest.

-yosefa raz, from "i too drag around tin cans"

[fiercynn]

palestinian poets: sheikha hlewa

sheikha hlewa (شيخة حليوى) was born in dhayl ‘araj, an unrecognized bedouin village near haifa. now living in jaffa, she is a lecturer on arab feminism at ben gurion university. her first short story collection, The Order C345 (C345 الطلبيّة), published in 2018, won the best short story book award in the arab world 2019–2020. she has published two other collections of short stories and one collection of poems, which have been translated into many languages.

IF YOU READ JUST ONE POEM BY SHEIKHA HLEWA, MAKE IT THIS ONE: "Last Dance" (translated by yosefa raz)

OTHER POEMS ONLINE BY SHEIKHA HLEWA THAT I LOVE

Nakba (translated by fady joudah) at the baffler

Elevator Speech (translated by kareem james abu-zeid) at fikra magazine

Exam (translated by fady joudah) at the baffler

Memory (translated by fady joudah) at the baffler)

[danielriddlerodriguez]

[I TOO DRAG AROUND TIN CANS] --Yosefa Raz

I too drag around tin cans so you can’t kiss me. I too have been beat up by cabbies thrown out of moving cars, gotten into screaming matches with cancerous secretaries. I too am covered in war paint like indelible ink, quick to jump to bait, to horse, to flower— don’t look both ways when entering the river. I too seal off passages to my heart like a besieged country, cut losses, cut brothers, don’t look back when I am lost in the forest. I too fear invisible drunken singers, I too fear white horses. I too can’t forgive can’t stained-glass out of here can’t tell you words of love when you ask for water.

[covertrook]

I too seal off passages to my heart like a besieged country, cut losses, cut brothers, don’t look back when I am lost in the forest.

Yosefa Raz

[elderlymag]

ELDERLY 27: MADE IN HEAVEN

Elderly is a bi-coast magazine.

THE BAY/NYC

Curated by Jamie Townsend & Nicholas DeBoer

free, creative commons, post anywhere, sharing is caring

Issue Twenty-Seven

LOURDES FIGUEROA

TOM MANDEL

BEN ROYLANCE

HEIDI VAN HORN

ERICK SÁENZ

YOSEFA RAZ

[jerusalism]

David Caplan interviewed by Lonnie Monka

LM: Virginia Quarterly Review created a poetry poster with your poem "God Knows English". The poem seems to riff off of the way people relate to language as a means to connect to the divine. It seems to hint at the particular backdrop of Hebrew, as the holy language, against the English most American Jews communicate with daily, while also touching upon more general concerns about the way in which sounds are imbued with meaning. Can you share your thoughts about these subjects?

DC: “God Knows English” is part of a sequence of poems in my current manuscript, Into My Garden, which considers life inside and outside a Chassidic yeshiva. The poems follow a person who is both like and unlike me as he works to adapt to the demanding, rewarding schedule of study and prayer.  

One challenge he faces is linguistic. Like other Jewish-Americans who grow in traditional religious observance, he needs to develop his knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages of the prayers and sacred texts. The poem expresses the envy and longing he feels listening to the other students smoothly study the texts in the loud study hall. In a certain sense, he is working to move from the ordinary to the sacred. Of course once he learns more he will understand the need to see the sacredness of the ordinary. In a sense, by detailing the ordinariness of religious study, I am trying to honor that effort.

LM: The poem's student is a compelling image, especially in that it reflects what I imagine draws many people to poetry -- namely, the desire "to move from the ordinary to the sacred". It's easy to imagine that people's search for the sacred is a kind of universal longing, while that search leads to deeply particular experiences. Thinking of the relationship of universals and particulars, your poetry seems as steeped in the particulars of Jewish religious life as it is immersed in the American poetic tradition. When writing or publishing, do you have a particular audience in mind?

DC: The question of audience would influence how much information is given: whether, for instance, certain terms need to be translated into English, and whether the poem needs to explain the action it dramatizes. I suppose my answer has to be hedging, because I don’t have a definite rule to address this important concern. My tendency is translate terms (such Beit Midrash to study hall) and avoid technical terms of Torah study, when possible. At the same time, my tendency is also to explain less, to risk a lack of clarify for the sake of intimacy and intensity. I don’t write primarily for Jewish publications or audiences—although I am of course pleased when they connect with my work. In this respect, I guess the reader I have in mind is a secular version of me.

LM: As an American here in Israel for a fellowship at Haifa University, what are your thoughts about the relationship between American and Israeli poetry? Do you see much of an interchange? Or are their connections and interactions that you would like to see?

DC: During this year and on previous trips, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a number of Israeli poets and poetry scholars. The conference, Poetry Now, offered one occasion; it featured a very interesting group poetry reading, as well as a number of very strong presentations. I particularly enjoyed meeting Rachel Tzvia Back, Yosefa Raz (my colleague this year at Haifa), Marcela Sulak, and, previously Linda Zisquit. What strikes me is how Israeli poetry, both in Hebrew and English, can employ place names and language to evoke a long history and literature. For instance, a poem might convey Biblical echoes in a way that American poetry would strain to do. The author can assume a certain knowledge and, especially in Hebrew, a recognition of allusion and context. As for American poetry, the field is so vast and diverse that I’m not sure how complete any list could be. Some of my favorite poets writing now are Yehoshua November, Harryette Mullen, Albert Goldbarth, DA Powell, and Maggie Smith, and I admire James Longenbach and Stephanie Burt as both scholars and poets. I think more interactions in person—that is, through readings and meetings, both formal and informal—can only help the art.

LM:  Thanks for sharing your thoughts about the works of others. To conclude this interview, it would great to hear about your current projects, or anything else that we can expect from you in the future.

DC: Thank you for your thoughtful questions. As I mentioned, I am working on a poetry manuscript, Into My Garden.  I am also writing American Poetry: A Very Short Introduction for Oxford University Press, as part of its Very Short Introduction Series, and have started work on a new monograph, tentatively called The Art of Exclusion, which proposes a new theory of modern and contemporary poetry.

--------------------------------------

This interview was conducted in preparation for the following Jerusalism events that David Caplan will be participating: the 2+2 reading (on 13.3.18), and the Poetic Tuition workshop (on 3.4.18). 

[soracities]

I too seal off passages to my heart like a besieged country, cut losses, cut brothers, don’t look back when I am lost in the forest.

Yosefa Raz, from ‘[I too drag around tin cans]’, in Guernica