Avia Tadmor’s daz­zling debut col­lec­tion, Song in Tam­muz,engages with promi­nent themes in con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish poet­ry and push­es them to new heights. Tad­mor bat­tles with the bur­den and joys of famil­ial inher­i­tance, includ­ing the inde­scrib­able lega­cy of the Holo­caust, as well as the restric­tions and oppor­tu­ni­ties afford­ed by both the tex­tu­al mate­ri­als and the nor­ma­tive prac­tices of the Jew­ish tra­di­tion. Sev­er­al poems adopt the per­spec­tive of the bib­li­cal fig­ure Ruth. Begin­ning with ​“Ruth Before Leav­ing Moab,” the poems attend to the emo­tion­al aspects of the bib­li­cal heroine’s sto­ry of exile in a man­ner akin to clas­si­cal midrash. In ​“Ruth from a Sud­den Clear­ing in the For­eign Field,” the speak­er cat­a­logs what she has for­got­ten from her life in Moab: both her father and her Phoeni­cian moth­er tongue.

Like Ruth, Tad­mor is a trav­el­er from her home­land. The open­ing poem, ​“Exo­dus Song,” grounds the col­lec­tion in the feel­ing of dis­place­ment. Yet even in exile, one can make mean­ing. The poem con­tains the line ​“Her pen is a strong­hold, a lighthouse/​flickering late in July.” Writ­ing can be a bea­con, point­ing the way towards safe­ty. Dis­place­ment also encour­ages us to reflect on our choic­es. At a writ­ers’ retreat in ​“Self-Por­trait in Vir­ginia: Fac­ing East,” the speak­er cog­i­tates on the ills fac­ing the world, from depres­sion to sub­stance abuse, and on the mer­ci­less march of time. The speak­er reports that she is ​“thir­ty-five, I’ve come here pill-stuffed, unchil­drened.” Despite the bib­li­cal injunc­tion to ​“be fruit­ful and mul­ti­ply,” Tad­mor, in sev­er­al poems, chal­lenges the expec­ta­tion to repro­duce. Yet child­hood inno­cence and pos­si­bil­i­ty are beau­ti­ful­ly depict­ed in ​“She is Three and to Her This is Just the World” a vivid and lyri­cal poem burst­ing with metaphor such as ​“gut­ted bell pep­pers sliding/​life after­noons from her palms into pots.”

Tad­mor has a pen­chant for long titles that seem to dis­close the con­ceit of a poem yet often become open­ing for sur­prise. ​“My Grand­fa­ther Deliv­ers a Survivor’s Tes­ti­mo­ny at Yad Vashem but Does not Say Auschwitz” is an instruc­tive exam­ple. It begins with the speaker’s grand­fa­ther explain­ing that he was named Adolf before telling his wind­ing sto­ry of sur­vival. Anoth­er poem, ​“My Grand­fa­ther Shows Me the Sepia Pho­tographs Tucked in his Pass­port Pock­et but Does not Say Auschwitz,” con­tains nei­ther pho­tographs nor a direct nar­ra­tive. Empha­siz­ing what has been lost, the poem unfolds in foot­notes to white space, arranged in a man­ner that resem­bles images but con­tains none. Mem­o­ries of a broth­er (in ​“Dirge with Hum­ming Desert”) and teacher (Lucie Brock-Broi­do, in ​“Lucie in Cam­bridge”) extend the theme of loss.

The joys and hard­ships of hav­ing a body gar­ner exact­ing treat­ment. The erot­i­cal­ly charged ​“Cam­panol­o­gy” explores ideas of over­com­ing Jew­ish sex­u­al repres­sion in pur­suit of roman­tic ful­fill­ment. Tad­mor writes: ​“but I under­stood both the sheet/& the yarmulke were reminders that love works/​like any lan­guage…” Bod­ies also decay and die, some­times cru­el­ly. In ​“Writ­ing to You,” the speak­er first frets about how their ​“hair will gray” as an entry into mem­o­ries of girl­hood, inter­spersed with ref­er­ences to the per­son­al, human toll of war and the destruc­tion it caus­es. The gar­den path in ​“Oh You Bruised Your Knee She Says and the Truth Is I Did Not” takes us to a gynecologist’s office and its atten­dant inti­ma­cy and anxiety. 

Despite the hor­rors of the past and the inevitabil­i­ty of death, we are alive, and that chal­lenges us to savor moments of viv­i­fy­ing beau­ty and depth of feel­ing — such as those giv­en to us by the excel­lent poet­ry in Song in Tam­muz.