At the heart of Owen Lewis’s new poet­ry col­lec­tion, A Prayer of Six Wings, is the dilem­ma faced by Jews around the world today: how do we live our lives in the face of the ongo­ing cri­sis in the Mid­dle East, with all of its ram­i­fi­ca­tions, includ­ing the way it’s fuel­ing anti­semitism? For Lewis, the dilem­ma is exac­er­bat­ed by the con­cern he feels for his daugh­ter and her fam­i­ly, who live in Tel Aviv.

In one of the poems at the begin­ning of the col­lec­tion, ​“In the Van to JFK,” Lewis writes about tak­ing his daugh­ter and her fam­i­ly to the air­port, en route to Israel. It begins with a seem­ing­ly sim­ple line that under­lies his con­cern: The van rides on sus­pend­ed judg­ment. The poem continues:

The pot-holes shake loose my worries 

for Vic­to­ria and Hezi (his arm across 

my shoul­ders to com­fort me), the young

Noa and Kobi, a para­pher­na­lia caravan 

of an exo­dus – strollers, car seats, bags…

By the end of the poem, his daugh­ter, a vio­lin­ist, is back in Israel, rehears­ing a Tchaikovsky piece. The poet wants to know where the con­duc­tor is send­ing the musi­cal notes – as if to ask, is there some­one who will lis­ten and hear the urgency of the music?

The appar­ent sim­plic­i­ty of most of Lewis’s poems allows the nar­ra­tives to stand out, and for the read­er to sense the fear and com­plex­i­ty of the moment. In ​“Two Thou­sand Pound Bombs Drop…,” Lewis writes about the excru­ci­at­ing hard­ship being endured by the peo­ple in both Israel and Gaza. The Israelis want the hostages to be released, and the Gazans want peace. They are neigh­bors, caught up in an unfor­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion that is beyond their con­trol, yet both peo­ples are unit­ed in their prayers for mercy:

Moth­ers look for us, called by the name yam­ma, calling 

the name imma. Our Father of mer­cy, not the god 

of sac­ri­fice. Our many cry­ing heads explode.

It’s worth not­ing that nowhere in the book does Lewis appar­ent­ly ques­tion his faith in Israel or Judaism. He often cites tra­di­tion­al litur­gy, cus­toms, and sources like the Bible, giv­ing his poems a rich his­tor­i­cal con­text. In ​“Rosh Hashanah Seder, 2024,” the poet observes his son-in-law pre­sid­ing over a Mizrahi tra­di­tion, with all of its sym­bols and pleas for hope, and ends the poem with his own prayer for security: 

Sure­ly like Ephraim and Manasseh…

May G‑d pre­serve the strength of this 

young father, hold­ing his fam­i­ly dear.

A Prayer of Six Wings is an ambi­tious col­lec­tion. It cap­tures the gamut of com­pli­cat­ed feel­ings many peo­ple who are impact­ed by the cri­sis are expe­ri­enc­ing – feel­ings that are wrapped up in reli­gion, pol­i­tics, his­to­ry, and place. Ulti­mate­ly, the book is a plea for faith in human­i­ty – an idea that is cap­tured at the end of the final poem in the col­lec­tion, ​“Of Six Wings:”

It’s about wings–

the stretch of fin­gered feathers–

the lift-off toward the cir­rus clouds 

beyond all con­ceiv­able expanse.

Six wings to stir the heav­en­ly sky 

and let our prayer on six wings fly!