#israeliliterature

[pebblegalaxy]

Unveiling Secrets and Ambition in Elite Institutions: A Deep Dive into The Nine by Jeane McWilliams Blasberg #TBRChallenge #bookchatter #BookReview #JewishFiction #IsraeliLiterature

A Deep Dive into The Nine by Jeane McWilliams Blasberg: A Gripping Tale of Family, Secrets, and Power Jeane McWilliams Blasberg’s novel The Nine is a masterful exploration of ambition, family dynamics, and the moral dilemmas we face when chasing success. Blasberg’s second novel, after the critically acclaimed Eden, offers readers an engaging and multilayered story that reflects on the…

[bklnpoet]

Book review: Late Beauty: Poems by Tuvia Ruebner

"Readers who devoured In the Illuminated Dark will welcome the additional poems in Late Beauty, and for readers unacquainted with Ruebner’s poetry Late Beauty provides a portal." -- From my review of Late Beauty: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner translated from the Hebrew by Lisa Katz and Shahar Bram in New York Journal of Books. 

[jerusalism]

Marcela Sulak interviewed by Geula Geurts

Geula Geurts: Thank you for agreeing to meet with me this early morning to discuss your poetry. 

Marcela Sulak: And thank you. 

GG: I’d like to start off with a question that intrigues me about poets in general, something I’m always curious about. How would you describe your mood when you write poetry?

MS: Well, there are different moods for different kinds of poems or genres of writing. The poems in my forthcoming collection City of Skypapers are a kind of morning ritual, or even a morning prayer. I tried to enter them with absolute openness, as if encountering a blank page. While writing them, it felt to me that the mood of each piece could be radically different. Some days I’d be obsessing about something specific, and other days I’d just be looking at the ducks in the Yarkon river, and some days I’d be wondering about the people I’m sitting next to on the bus. 

GG: That’s a lovely daily writing ritual. It feels very appropriate for us to talk about your poems in the morning, and in a sukkah, surrounded by a green garden.

Marcela Sulak: Yes, Sukkot is definitely a favorite holiday. I’m very much drawn to the yearly cycle and rhythm of the land, the harvest seasons and all they involve. 

GG: Your poems are indeed very much grounded in harvest imagery, vegetables, fruit, plants. They seem to naturally recur throughout your poems, often as organic background “props,” even when they aren’t the center of the poem. How do you explain this? 

MS: In my first book “Immigrant,” I was interested in how people are changed by the plants and nature around them, and vice versa. How the plants around them create sacred rituals or holidays. And in my second book, with laws and rules governing eating and social behavior.

I actually grew up on a rice farm, in a family that sustained itself. We had a garden, chickens, a cow; my mom sewed our clothes. We were commercially almost independent. So, I’m accustomed to apprehending the world that way. To ask myself, what’s growing on it, when is it in season? I grew up sensitive to sunrise, sunset, seasons. I learned to mark them by what was growing. I’ve also moved around a lot as an adult, and the natural world has always been the one stable thing in my life. I’ve frequently exchanged languages and countries, so I ordered myself through the natural world. Eating is actively consuming the natural world, it’s a constant everywhere, a communion with the world. Eating also brings people together, there is an intimacy. GG: I can sense this in your poem “Shekhinah, a prayer” where you write:

When I break the first egg, break the second, the chickens 

do not pause in their pecking, the insects in the grass 

continue to hide behind their blades. Companion 

is still one who shares my bread.

It feels like the imagery of the natural world imbues your poems with spirituality, sometimes even religion. 

MS: True. I think that the Jewish yearly cycle itself is grounded in the garden, is in constant conversation with the harvest. Look at Sukkot, Pesach, Shavuot; the rhythms of the land take on ritualistic and religious meaning.

GG: I’ve noticed that “place” is also an important factor in your poems. In “Skypapers” your home-setting of Tel Aviv is central. The mundane, everyday factors of city life: the market, the bus, the river, the garden, the kitchen. 

MS: In this book I didn’t have one general theme, but I wanted the collection to be a set of daily poems. My everyday life entails a morning run to the sea, or to my vegetable garden and orchard, a bus commute or bicycle ride to work, or cooking in my kitchen. And there is ritual there too. Much of Jewish custom is grounded in the fine details of the day to day, from kashrut to raising children. 

GG: The poem sequence which starts with the line “To get here today” seems to be grounded in poetic form, yet the language feels like a natural flow, a stream of consciousness. Can you explain what poetic choices you’ve made there?

MS: The idea of these daily meditation poems was also to mimic how the mind works. I mainly wrote on the bus or while walking in the city. I tried to remember my thinking process, from one thought to the next, to observe my mental process. I did this as a practice every day for six months. I wrote it all down in the form of a block. And only afterwards did I shape the poem into form, with either the ottava rima structure, or sonnet sequences. Cutting the block of free writing into form forced me to eliminate non-essential parts of the poem, the debris you delete when form asks for rhyme. Poetic form is like a hanger on which the dress of the poem takes shape. 

GG: What a wonderful answer on poetic craft! To conclude, would you say you’ve ended up writing a collection of love-poems to Tel Aviv?

MS: Ha! Let’s just say that Tel-Aviv and I are in a complicated relationship, an open relationship maybe. I never dreamed of living here, but I can say that I’m growing into the city. Since I started leasing the vegetable garden plot and orchard, and running by the river, I’ve found nature and peace within the city structures. I feel more expanded now. I don’t know if I’ll always live in Tel Aviv. Perhaps these are more poems that embody the act of falling in love with a city, learning the self within the city.

This interview was conducted in preparation for the Celebrate Olim reading organized at Beit Uri Zvi. Check out Jerusalism for the best literary and cultural events in the city.

[gigiglorious]

This book is so easy to fall into, yet really deep. I always start the best books just before their due dates and then end up having to try and read them super fast. ••••• #bookstagram #books #instabook #bookporn #currentlyreading #librarybooks #historicalfiction #thebeautyqueenofjerusalem #sarityishailevi #israeliliterature #jewishliterature

[booksandblintzes]

#BookMail is the best mail! Thank you LibraryThing! #israeliliterature #bookreview

[dimestorebookgirl-blog]

Decided to veg out and read in instead of head out to a movie today. My tummy’s rebelling and I just need to be home I guess. So I decided to head into the mind of one of my favorite memoirists most recent fiction work, Judas by Amos Oz. . Oz is one of the authors so special to me that I feel like hugging his books when I read them. I’m excited to read a secular Jewish Israeli author’s take on the maligned zealot’s story. Very exciting. . . . #judas #amosoz #israel #israeliliterature #jewish #novel #fiction #book #books #bookish #read #reading #reader #booklove #booklover #bookaddict #bookaholic #bookworms #booknerd #bookstagram #instabook #bookstagrammer (at Jennings Lodge, Oregon)

[memoryandmigration-blog]

Each kilometer that the airplane gulped, took me further into a one way tunnel. The flight was a difficult separation from a pained love. When I opened my eyes, I imagined that I was looking at a Fata Morgana, which was stranger than anything I had ever known... I loved Haifa then, and about half a century later, I am faithful to this love. But at the beginning of my first day in Israel there were no designated moments for love set aside.

Sami Michael, Iraqi-Israeli Poet on his first day in Israel

[jevonbolden]

“God gave these four young men an unusual aptitude for understanding every aspect of literature and wisdom. And God gave Daniel the special ability to interpret the meanings of visions and dreams”‭‭ (Daniel‬ ‭1:17, NLT‬‬). Daniel is one of my favorite men of God. He advised kings and facilitated discussions among people of great authority. God revealed to him the very intimate motivations of their hearts. Though he was a captive, the Lord strategically planted him to engage their culture, learn their stories, and influence the direction of their political and social systems. Joseph is another one of my biblical heroes for a similar reason. This is what excites me about growing my experiences with many stories from the diverse people around the world. Cultural stories reveal the fears, failures, bravery, loves, passions, dreams, and visions of a group of people. I don't believe we can authentically win each other without demonstrating sincere interest in and compassion for each other's stories. Thank you Maya Books and Music for making your eclectic collection available to the community. I was talking with Yvette, who manages Maya's, about the books I selected and this idea of gaining a compassionate understanding of our global community, and she said to me today, "You are going to teach this." #israeliliterature #mexicanliterature #asianliterature #islamicliterature #jewishliterature #iranianliterature

[pebblegalaxy]

Songs for the Brokenhearted: A Journey of Love, Loss, and Rediscovery in Ayelet Tsabari's Novel #TBRChallenge #bookchatter #BookReview #JewishFiction #IsraeliLiterature

Songs for the Brokenhearted: A Journey Through History, Identity, and Healing In her debut novel Songs for the Brokenhearted, Ayelet Tsabari crafts a poignant and intricately layered narrative that weaves together personal and historical threads to create a rich tapestry of love, loss, identity, and the pursuit of belonging. Set against the backdrop of two distinct yet interconnected time…

[bklnpoet]

Book review: The Diamond Setter by Moshe Sakal

"well written, masterfully translated by Jessica Cohen, and rewards rereading." -- From my review of The Diamond Setter by Moshe Sakal in New York Journal of Books

[jerusalism]

Karen Alkalay-Gut interviewed by Josh Friedlander

JF: You were born in the UK, educated in the US, and have spent much of your professional life in Israel. Where do you feel most at home? Do you see yourself as an Israeli poet?

KA: Definitely -- but my most recent project, that will be coming out at the end of the month, is in Yiddish.

One of the ways I see my role as a writer is to act as a bridge between Israel and the world. A tiny bridge, but still a bridge.

JF: Your doctoral thesis was on Theodore Roethke, and you've written on the Victorian poet Adelaide Crapsey (not a familiar name to me -- was this a Rochester connection?) Have these writers influenced your work? Are there any other major influences, in English or Hebrew?

KA: Because I taught English poetry for over 50 years most of my influences are American and English. Roethke and Crapsey still sing to me. I got to Crapsey because she was a Rochester poet and when I read them, in Israel, I was overwhelmed -- she was a good poet but almost unknown. I spent a few months back in Rochester when my father was ill and got to know the family and became intrigued with how someone so lyrical could be unknown. I am still intrigued by her poetry, but more by artists and poets who disappear from our radar or are never discovered, and a few of the doctorates I still supervise deal with poets like this. I’ve also been devoting a lot of time to an actor and director named Kurt Gerron who was killed in Auschwitz and most of his 95 films have disappeared.

JF: The way that you have worked in so many media, particularly with musicians, is reminiscent of earlier poetic traditions of bards or troubadours, when you could easily have stayed within the academy as a writer, teacher, critic. How did you break into this artistic mode?

KA: It comes naturally. I love working with musicians, dancers, painters, etc. It inspires me.

And I love reading poetry out loud -- any poetry, all poetry.

JF: What led you to start writing in Hebrew? Does your Hebrew writing express something different to the English?

KA: Every language brings out something to me. I’m not very original in Hebrew as yet, but in Yiddish -- which I tried only a few years ago -- I discovered a great deal of my past. Still, my real poetic language remains English.

JF: Finally -- as founder of the Israeli Association for Writers in English -- is there space for an Anglophone Israeli poetics? How vibrant is the community?

KA: There SHOULD be room.

First of all, when I founded the IAWE it was because I had been asked by the government to create an English writers association, and for a few years they supported us financially, paying for publication of our journals, according us halls in the writers’ house in Tel Aviv for public readings and meetings, and making paperwork easy for us. That disappeared in the ‘90’s. I always think that was a mistake because we could be wonderful good will ambassadors.

Second, there are so many English speakers here and someone should be speaking for them. Most English speakers like to remain tied to their origins, and if they read at all, prefer to read from the popular culture, but they need to have their lives mirrored back to them. It would be good for them, but there are few venues -- no papers who publish poetry as well, no publishers for local work in English, no journals. That’s what we all need to work on.

—————————————————

This interview was conducted in preparation for the Jerusalism event Every Calm a Storm: arc25 Launch Party, hosted at HaMiffal on January 15th, 2017.

[jerusalism]

Mark L. Levinson interviewed by Noam Freshman

NF: Please tell us a little about yourself. What inspired you to move to Israel?

ML: The Lone Ranger made me a Zionist. I spent my childhood watching TV heroes whose behavior implied that a responsible adult gives precedence to any call for help, from any decent person, over the personal business of the day. Sky King, the Lone Ranger, Davy Crockett, Roy Rogers. So when I finished college and had nothing else to do, the question was whom to help. But I should say more about having nothing else to do. In 1970, the US economy offered no jobs for new liberal-arts graduates, President Nixon was spreading bitterness, bumper stickers were saying “America: Love It or Leave It,” and the shock of Nazism that delegitimized the anti-Semites was showing the first signs of fading. It was hard to maintain the belief that America’s real soul was represented not by the redneck right but by me and my socialist-leaning incense-burning intellectual friends. Some disenchanted Americans were leaving for Sweden, Canada, or Australia. I didn’t belong to a Zionist youth movement, I’d never visited Israel, and I didn’t know a soul there. When the Six Day War was in the papers, I didn’t even understand that it was a big thing. But I realized that in my case there was a country that would be not merely tolerant but welcoming, a country that needed and appreciated help, and it happened to be the land of my ancestors. So whereas Davy Crockett went to Texas, I went to Israel and had better luck.

NF: You're a poet! What inspires or sparks your imagination? What is your writing process? What’s the most difficult part of this process?

ML: As Leonard Cohen said, “If I knew where the poems come from, I’d go there more often.” Generally I start with a phrase, and if it dictates a meter (which isn’t always) I develop the poem in that meter. When I look back, I find that my poems often include a newspaper, a bus, or a dog. I don’t like dogs.

NF: In reading and writing poetry, how important to you is it that a poem be accessible in terms of being “solved.”

ML: Just as eventually you’ll find water if you dig deep enough anywhere on earth, eventually any poem is mysterious if you consider it deeply enough.  All our writing is made out of mysterious materials. But it’s up to the poet to keep the intentional mystery at a tolerable level, which unfortunately may vary from reader to reader, and make sure not to be unintentionally baffling.  

NF: What writers (or books) did you at first dislike but grew into?

ML: I can’t remember going back to a writer or book that I disliked. There are so many other options.

NF: Jerusalem has had pilgrims visiting it for thousands of years. What literary pilgrimages have you been on?

ML: An odd thing happened to me some decades ago, pre-Internet. A little sci-fi magazine in the USA asked if I’d like to write some literary criticism. I said sorry, but I’m in Israel and I can’t put my hands on every book I’d need for research. I can’t, for example, just take the subway to the library and borrow everything Henry Kuttner ever wrote. I’d picked an author at random, but they wrote back saying “But we really would like an article from you for our special Henry Kuttner issue.” I figured it was a sign from on high, so I hit every used book store I knew (and there were a lot back then) and that was my pilgrimage. I didn’t find everything, but the search was a good workout for my primitive huntsman instinct and I did get the article written.

NF: When did you first learn that language had power?

ML: That language itself has power, above and beyond the logic that the language contains, I suppose I realized instinctively but I was additionally enlightened by a book that explored the concept of truth in various cultures. It said that in the Arab culture the rhyming or assonance of words can carry a lot of weight in giving an idea legitimacy. I realized that the same thing is true in our own culture, to an extent, as for example when O.J. Simpson’s lawyer told the jury in connection with the glove produced as evidence: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

NF: Much of your career has been involved in translating. What are some of the interests, oddities, and challenges of translating Hebrew?

ML: I write a monthly column about the challenges of translating various specific Hebrew words and phrases, and I thank you for the chance to plug it: http://www.elephant.org.il/translate/. I’d be happy to see the comment section at the end of the column used more often than it is. Aside from such specific translation issues, there’s a general issue that challenges translators of fiction: Hebrew doesn’t really have past and present tenses, it has perfect and imperfect, and a writer can freely slip between them when describing the past. I had one writer insist on keeping a mixture of past and present in the translation, and although I don’t think the result was successful (and someone’s subsequent editing, after my translation, made the text even worse here and there), I can understand why he insisted. Often something is lost in translating the imperfect tense, which can be used for telling “how it was,” into the past tense, which tells “what happened.”

NF: You edited this edition of arc which is based around the theme of A Calm Inside a Storm. What inspired this theme and how did the theme guide and shape the development of the issue?

ML: As co-editors, Shlomo Yashar and I wanted a theme that would provide for a sympathetic portrait of the Israeli condition without ruling out a broad range of other topics and approaches. In our call for entries, we included some suggestions that pointed in the direction of war and peace, and a lot of our contributors took that direction.

NF: What did you find challenging about editing, as opposed to writing?

ML: There aren’t enough outlets for English-language writing in Israel, so the fate of a submission to any project like ours takes on more significance for the writer than ideally it should. It can be a troubling responsibility, and that’s one reason that arc normally switches editors from issue to issue. The contributors and would-be contributors shouldn’t depend on the taste of one or two people, however competent, for years upon years.

—————————————————

This interview was conducted in preparation for the Jerusalism event Every Calm a Storm: arc25 Launch Party, hosted at HaMiffal on January 15th, 2017.

[jerusalism]

Lois Michal Unger interviewed by Etti  Calderon

EC: What have been the effects of writing about your personal experiences and your family? Do you feel that your writing helps you to better connect with and understand your life and relationships?

LMU: Much of my poetry is about personal relationships, conversations, confrontations between people. Often the truth is camouflaged. My writing isn't cathartic. It just is.

EC: How do you find balance between seeing the world as a writer and experiencing your life in the moment?

LMU: My writing isn't planned. I don't see a situation and decide to write about it. Sometimes poems are born in my head and I'm just the conduit for writing them down.

EC: Were you pulled toward writing prose or poetry first?  

LMU: Poetry. When I was 11 I won a prize from Junior Scholastic Magazine.

EC: When you write poetry, do you imagine reading the poems aloud? Do you connect with them differently when they are read in front of an audience as opposed to when you read them to yourself?

LMU: I was an actress. I try to use acting techniques to focus. Yeah, it's different reading in front of an audience.

—————————————————

This interview was conducted in preparation for the Jerusalism event Every Calm a Storm: arc25 Launch Party, hosted at HaMiffal on January 15th, 2017.

[jerusalism]

Michael Dickel interviewed by Moshe Lapin

ML: What is your relationship to Whitman, how does he influence your work, has the way you think of his work evolved over time as your work has changed? 

MD: Whitman, often called a or the father of poetry, for me represents more of a great-grandfather. Before, as a poet myself, I had read Whitman, I had listened to recordings of and read Allen Ginsburg. Ginsburg awoke me to another aspect of poetry—I had up to then been entranced with e e cummings play with typography and syntax. The Beats represented something more “natural” sounding that appealed to me.

I read other Beats, Felinghetti and Kerouac, of course, and later read Ann Waldman extensively. The Beats, for me, would be the parental generation—especially as I encountered a recording of Ginsburg reading Kaddish, which blew my mind, when I was in 9th grade, working in a public library, a formative time amidst Vietnam War protests and the Woodstock Generation (which I trailed, slightly).

Behind the Beats, I found William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore—for me, their stream of Modernism forms the grandparent generation. Then I read Whitman again (having read some in Jr. High and High School English), and discovered his influence on Ginsburg in particular, but the Beats in general. He and Emily Dickinson, I would say, influenced through other writers, first, then later, through my own direct reading as I matured through university and into adulthood (whatever that might be).

Whitman influenced me most, I think, through his long lines, descriptive lists that one professor called “shopping lists,” but for me were images leaping out from an ecstasy of observation. The poetry arose for me as much from the associations in the lists and descriptive language as from anything else. His use of what Robert Bly would later call “sentence sound”—the rhythm, tone, and voice of “plain American” language—also attracted me. It brought me down from a poetic voice that sought an elevated podium to someone (I hope) more speaking with others than to them. Granted, I still like language play and musical rhythm in my poetry, but I think the diction in particular is more down-to-earth, reaching to objects on the ground as much as ideas in the sky. Whitman balanced both, in a way I have yet to master, and this still inspires me.

Over time I have come to realize how revolutionary his voice really was, both politically and poetically. Having come to him through the Beats and the protest poetry of the 1960s, I continue to expect engagement with the world in poetry. At the time Whitman published the first edition / version of Leaves of Grass (1855), many critics attacked him from bringing the literal body and the body politic into his poetry, even denouncing it, saying it was not poetry because of this. My looking more consciously to Whitman as a “source” has increased, now knowing his commitment to going forward speaking the world as it is, what Czeslaw Milosz and, from Milosz, Carolyn Forché would call “poetry of witness.”

ML: What do you think of the relationship between your teaching and writing, between the academy and creative work?

MD: That’s a complex series of intersections and overlaps for me. First, I’m not sure that I have really been more than on the margins of “the academy,” certainly since moving to Israel. Most of my teaching here has been English-language teaching—some academic writing, but except for one course (which I taught for two years), it has been in the context of foreign language instruction. I have taught a little creative writing, also in that context, here. Even in the U.S., my jobs mostly in the areas of academic writing and writing centers. In both contexts, I have taught some literature and some creative writing. However, almost all of my paid work in academia has not been “academic” in the sense of reading and writing criticism. What I have mostly published academically has been administrative or pedagogical theory or observation.

All of that said, there is a relationship. Especially when I teach writing—whatever flavor—I am interested in helping students find their own voice, follow their own interests and obsessions (if you will), and developing passion for what they have to say—even in academic writing assignments, where doing any of these may be more of a challenge. For me, the relationship of the academy and creative work arises from there, but goes further—finding contexts for one’s own work, like what I briefly traced above for Whitman; finding inspiration, tools, and skills to use; and perhaps less obvious but just as important, finding contexts one might wish to measure oneself against or to resist in one’s work.

More specifically to my own teaching, I encourage as best I can creativity, play with language and meaning, moving from fear of “getting it wrong” to joy in exploring “other possibilities.” What does this mean? It means to embrace creativity and your own weirdness, to use these to discover and learn more about your subject, topic, theme, image, and to relax about mistakes during the process. This comes back to Whitman—as he went through life, as events around him changed, as he grew firmer in some beliefs (perhaps) and grew out of others (perhaps), he reinvented his book, Leaves of Grass. He added poems, he revised poems, he changed the book, even while leaving it his book—it changed as he did.

Similarly, Michel de Montaigne, considered the inventor of the essay, would go back and revise. In his methodology, he started his new ideas where he left off in the essay—saying something like, having considered further these ideas and read more, I have come to think differently now. (Today, both academic writing and creative writing is revised according to the new view throughout, erasing the earlier ideas and putting forward only the latest—sometimes I play with this in my own non-fiction and leave traces of the older views in various ways.)

On a smaller scale, students can (and should, I tell them) come back during revision with a willingness to change what they started writing to what they have learned they want to say (which sometimes could be quite different). I encourage revision that reflects their own changes (albeit in the small time of a semester, rather than a lifetime—but also as they go forward in their studies). And I encourage them to find their own questions, follow their own quest, searching out wherever they may lead. And this path is the same in creative work or academic work. It’s just a difference in frameworks for the quest.

ML: Can you reflect on Whitman's influence on Israeli literature more generally? Where does Israeli literature stand today?

MD: I honestly don’t feel qualified to give a detailed answer to this. I have mostly studied American and global Anglophone literatures, and I don’t read Hebrew at a level to comment on Israeli literature. I have only read it in translation. I have met, spoken with, shared a reading stage with some Hebrew poets, and seen an active, vital community.

I know there are Israelis writing in English. As the former chair of the Israel Association of Writers in English, I know many of these people. There is significant writing in English among Anglo-Israelis and others who choose to write in English to reach a wider audience (including at least one Palestinian-Israeli from Tel Aviv). I know there are authors from here receiving worldwide attention (in English, which is where I do my literary reading)—either in translation or writing originally in English. I have read many, but still don’t feel that I don’t have a developed sense of “where…Israeli literature stand[s] today…” I should.

Russian writers in Israel also publish a lot of work, but I haven’t read any of it, even in translation. And I know there are also authors— in Arabic (most would call themselves Palestinian rather than Israeli, I think), French, even someone I met who writes in Spanish. I have read some Arabic writers in translation, as I have some Hebrew writers. I am sure other writers in other languages, who I am not aware of, among Israeli writers.

There is an active spoken-word scene here, with Hebrew and English writers, some of whom I know personally, more of whom I’ve seen perform. This community also seems to me very vital.

However, these are all general impressions—more because of my own limitations and faults than for any other reason. I really think there is a vital community here of writers, and a context that calls for important and significant voices to speak to it—“the situation,” which must in some way figure in all of our consciousnesses.

Where Whitman fits in any of this, I can’t say.

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

This interview was conducting in preparation for the Jerusalism event Therefore For Thee, which took place at the iconic Barbur Gallery on December 11th, 2017. The event was a celebration of the poetry and influence of Walt Whitman.

[jerusalism]

Dani Stieglitz interviewed by Josh Friedlander

JF: What made you want to be a writer? Did you always want to?

DS: Creating stories is something that has always come naturally to me. I have a vivid imagination. It probably also helped that my parents were both educators, with my father specializing in Elementary Education.

JF: How has the immigrant experience affected your writing? Is it ‘Israeli'? Does the rhythm of Hebrew impact your English prose in any way?

DS: I don't think the immigrant experience itself has affected my writing. My genres of choice are fantasy and science fiction. However, I used my aliyah benefits to get my Masters in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan University. That certainly helped me to find my voice as a writer.

JF: Which city/yishuv do you live in? Do you have a community of writers there?

DS: I live in Jerusalem, in the Katamonim neighborhood. I'm connected with a lot of writers and often meet with some of them about once a month for writing sprints that can go until well after midnight when the muses are calling to all of us.

JF: Which authors are your fantasy/sci-fi inspirations? Do you enjoy the blank canvas that these genres offer you? Judaism too has its ur-narratives, its stories overspilling the bounds of the real world. Do you think that your Jewish background ties in with what you write? (Many have regarded Asimov's Foundation saga as his own meditation on Jewish history.)

DS: I'm a big fan of Neil Gaiman, particularly his graphic novel, "Sandman". I also admire JK Rowling - she really made the world of Harry Potter come to life. I LOVE the blank canvas that these genres offer me. I can create anything that my imagination comes up with and that potentially has no limits - I just need to respect the rules that I establish for the world I create. I'm sure my Jewish background plays a role. While in some ways that role might be more passive, sometimes I'll name things based on the Hebrew equivalent of the word. (For instance - I named a dessert in a potential novel I'm writing, "Midbar".)

JF: Your writing embraces narrative and story. How important is form to you, on a word-sentence-paragraph level? Does the content dictate the form?

DS: As I mentioned above, "I can create anything that my imagination comes up with and that potentially has no limits - I just need to respect the rules that I establish for the world I create." There must always be rules. If I create a world where anything goes then the reader can't see the same continuity. It's not as clear as it might be in the head of the author. The challenge is to bring your world alive for everyone else. In order to do that you have to have rules and explain those rules properly. Form is important to me and it's something I'm constantly learning and re-learning. In my early days as a writer I tried to write entire novels without truly having a grasp on certain writing styles. When studying for my MA in Creative Writing we were required to only submit short stories. This helped me to better learn and understand how to create a clear beginning, middle, and end. I also learned how to be more clear and concise. What to focus on and what to focus less on. How to show more and tell less. As I write a lot aimed towards Young Adult, I try to follow the rules of the Young Adult mold. To better understand that, I read a lot of Young Adult books. It helps me better understand how to unfold a Young Adult story. I also learn how to do things better, like keeping my sentences short and sweet. So in this sense, yes, the content dictates the form.

JF: You draw a lot from the world of comics. How important do you think the recent wave of Hollywood comic book adaptations has been, in literary terms? Do you think we are closer to viewing them as "serious" literature?

DS: Firstly, I'm in absolute heaven that comic books are coming to the big screen. These were my childhood heroes and now I'm seeing them come to life. When I collected comic books as a child, it was not the "cool" thing to do. Now going to see a comic book movie is the "cool" thing to do. As a result, I think this does bring more respect to comic books as a literary form. In many ways I think that comic books are already considered serious literature, particularly things written in the form of Graphic Novels. More and more colleges are offering the Graphic Novel as a course. This alone is recognition of it as serious literature. On a side-note, I hold comic books to a higher standard now versus how I did as a kid. If the character, writer or writing did not mature with me, then it's not something I go back to. As an adult I'm looking for smart and as realistic as a comic book can be - such as larger than life characters having normal, day-to-day problems.

This interview was conducted in preparation for the Jerusalism event “2&2″ which took place at the Abraham Hostel in Jerusalem on December 4, 2017.

[jerusalism]

Shlomo Sher interviewed by Josh Friedlander

JF: How did you get to being a poet?

SS: I was growing up in '68, there were all kinds of protests going on -- a bit like what we have nowadays, people unhappy with their government. I went to City College, New York.

JF: - a hotbed of radicalism -

SS: Yes, since much earlier.

JF: So you were protesting Vietnam and all that?

SS: Yes, I imagine so. There was a lot of that stuff going on. Later I became more interested in Zionism and my Jewish background. Then, and today, Jews didn't know a lot about their background. For young Jews today -- Judaism is a foreign culture to them. They're lost.

And then my Zionism fed into my writing, and later my politics. That's what the theme is for the new issue [of the Israel Association of Writers in English journal] -- the way that we are attacked here, the way people deal with the vicissitudes of life, the terror attacks and rockets...  

JF: Do you find inspiration in Jewish texts?

SS: I do. I think you're always inspired by your surroundings. When I lived in Oregon, I was inspired by the nature, the remoteness. It works its way into your poetry. When I lived in New York, I wrote about the Hasidic world. Now the political world gets into my poetry. I feel sorry for people who live in static worlds.

JF: You've been mentored by great poets -- John Ashberry, for one. How did you meet him? Has your work been influenced by his style at all?

SS: My first great mentor was Menke Katz. He was a Yiddish poet who later wrote in English, he used to stand on the corner with these books yelling "poetry, poetry!" People thought he as talking about chickens! [poultry...] He pulled me into that world, I guess. I was a pre-engineering student, and later I'd done graduate courses in journalism. It was around 1972/73 that I first started seeing myself as a poet. Another important mentor was Larry Levis, who was also a major poet in his own right.

I studied creative writing in Iowa and met John [Ashberry] when I was back teaching in NY. I was just starting to teach classes and he was patient and helpful, and taught me a lot. He was the true image of a poet, and a mensch. He just died a few months ago.

JF: Yes. His poetry is difficult to parse at a line level, but there's a beauty in the language.

SS: Right, it's difficult to read literally, but it's like a collage.

JF: When did you first meet William Stafford?

SS: That was when I was teaching in Oregon. He was a very serious, intense man. His family were Quakers, and he went to jail during WWII [as a pacifist]. We once spent a cross-country flight together, from New York to the Northwest. When I was publishing a book I sent it to him to review and he gave me a nice quote for it.

JF: There are a couple of names from that period I'd like to throw at you, that I figured you might have encountered, or read.

SS: Sure.

JF: David Shapiro.

SS: Yes, I met him. He had a photographic memory, he could read a poem and then recite it off by heart. He would have been considered an iluy in the religious world.

JF: He was part of that New York world -- there's a famous picture of him sitting at the desk of the dean of Columbia in 68.

SS: Yes. I met him through John.

JF: Another name -- a bit older. Louis Zukofsky?

SS: I never met him, but I've read his writing. Another writer who dealt with Jewish themes, something which is rarer nowadays.

JF: Also someone, like Katz, who came from the world of Yiddish poetry and was able to transfer it to English poetry, and in a very experimental, avant-garde way.

SS: I'm full of admiration for people who can write in another language. Now, when I imagine writing in ivrit -- there are so many nuances. Lines, breaks, cadences, meter, internal rhymes. I'm getting better at Hebrew. Hats off to Joseph Brodsky, who could not only learn to write in a second language, but could be even better at that than in his first.

It takes immersion -- maybe if I were thirty years younger...now I'm in my late sixties. I need to expand my immersion.

JF: Who are you reading these days? Either contemporary or not.

SS: I'm not really keeping up with who gets published in which magazine, who reviews what. I used to. There's someone called Yehoshua November who writes about some Jewish themes. And Linda Zisquit...

JF: Have you got anything in the pipeline?

SS: Rachel Heimowitz got in touch with me a while ago, and we were talking about publishing some of my new writing. She said to me you check all the boxes: you're white, male, right-wing, not PC, now it's very important.

JF: What Harold Bloom calls "the school of resentment". But you're still writing.

SS: I'm not complaining, I'm very fortunate. I have a new book out last year, and a new manuscript that's a bit more political.

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This interview was conducted in preparation for the Jerusalism event Every Calm a Storm: arc25 Launch Party, hosted at HaMiffal on January 15th, 2017.