Poet­ry

Harm­less

Myra Sklarew
  • Review
By – October 10, 2011

The ques­tion of Jew­ish­ness in poet­ry is too often answered by writ­ing that seems like a forced demon­stra­tion of iden­ti­ty or an over­ly rehearsed, mock­ing self-hatred. Or it’s pre­ten­tious­ly learned. Or it lives entire­ly in nos­tal­gia. Over sev­er­al decades, Myra Sklarew has care­ful­ly avoid­ed these stances. Her art is most pro­found­ly Jew­ish even when it is not top­i­cal­ly Jew­ish. Her iden­ti­ty as a Jew­ish woman and artist, a time trav­el­er who breathes and reimag­ines Jew­ish expe­ri­ence across the ages, is secure. Her mod­esty in stance and style rests on cer­tain­ties that remain unnamed while releas­ing the pow­er of acute perceptions.

Sklarew is at home with Torah as myth and his­to­ry, and also with mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary his­to­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly its themes of vio­lence and sep­a­ra­tion. She cher­ish­es equal­ly the cre­ative urge and coura­geous fail­ures of the artist and of the sci­en­tist. She is at home with the con­stant flux of loss, dis­ori­en­ta­tion, and bal­ance restored. At home with mys­tery, she is wise enough not to unrav­el it. 

As Myra Sklarew med­i­tates on the con­se­quences of war (“Sleep­ing in Lithua­nia”), the ever­green mean­ings of sacred sto­ry (“Cross­ing Over” and Moses”), the rich­ness of Jew­ish poet­ic achieve­ment (“Keep­ing Silent: for Stan­ley Kunitz” and The Jour­ney,” hon­or­ing Yehu­da Hale­vi), or the unfath­omable resilience of griev­ing moth­ers and aban­doned chil­dren, she awak­ens us to the mag­ic of dvarim— words, words pol­ished and fit­ted togeth­er into an ascend­ing stair­case. Notes.

Philip K. Jason is pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of Eng­lish at the Unit­ed States Naval Acad­e­my. A for­mer edi­tor of Poet Lore, he is the author or edi­tor of twen­ty books, includ­ing Acts and Shad­ows: The Viet­nam War in Amer­i­can Lit­er­ary Cul­ture and Don’t Wave Good­bye: The Chil­dren’s Flight from Nazi Per­se­cu­tion to Amer­i­can Free­dom.

Discussion Questions