Poet­ry

Out of Silence Into Being

Rebec­ca Camhi Fromer
  • Review
By – November 14, 2011
In Who is the Archi­tect of a Dream,” we find the essence of Rebec­ca Camhi Fromer’s poet­ry: “…A need to, if not actu­al­ly climb/​The moun­tain, how­ev­er steep,/To do so with all one’s passion/​In a consummate/​Act of imagination?/…we have finally/​Understood/​We have work to do,/And our voic­es are need­ed?” In this remark­able col­lec­tion the poet stud­ies every­thing, includ­ing schol­ar­ship, phi­los­o­phy, nature, art, tyran­ny, love, and more. The col­lec­tion begins with a bold trib­ute to Daniel Pearl, the jour­nal­ist inves­ti­gat­ing ter­ror­ism relat­ed to cul­tur­al under­stand­ing, seduced and mur­dered by those he sought to under­stand. The Schol­ar” series of poems fol­lows, com­par­ing and con­trast­ing those who praise and damn the schol­ar, as the schol­ar remains true to his or her work rather than seek the fleet­ing response of oth­ers. War and tyran­ny expose the lack of imag­i­na­tion, rea­son, and pur­pose of the per­pe­tra­tors, leav­ing behind “…The distillation/​And triumph/​Of unfor­get­table beau­ty.” Exquis­ite­ly selec­tive lan­guage, images, and thoughts will be new­ly per­ceived by the read­er open to expe­ri­enc­ing the heights of poet­ic sensibility.
Deb­o­rah Schoen­e­man, is a for­mer Eng­lish teacher/​Writing Across the Cur­ricu­lum Cen­ter Coor­di­na­tor at North Shore Hebrew Acad­e­my High School and coed­i­tor of Mod­ern Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture: A Library of Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism, Vol. VI, pub­lished in 1997.

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