November’s third poet­ry col­lec­tion is a pro­found explo­ration, a tes­ta­ment to the spir­i­tu­al depth of the poems. The title is inspired by a response from Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism, to his stu­dent, Rab­bi Ze’ev: ​“The kavan­ot (Kab­bal­is­tic med­i­ta­tions) are keys, each unlock­ing anoth­er door in our souls, each access­ing anoth­er cham­ber in the super­nal worlds. But there is one key that unlocks all doors, that opens up for us the inner­most cham­bers of the divine palace. That mas­ter key is a bro­ken heart.” 

The bro­ken heart in these poems reveals itself as sor­row, loss, and grief. It is strik­ing that the sor­row and grief echo and pay homage to one of the cen­tral themes in the Book of Lamen­ta­tions. Part of the pow­er of Lamen­ta­tions lies in its vivid descrip­tion of the Baby­lon­ian con­quest of Jerusalem. When the prophet Jere­mi­ah finds hope, it is inspir­ing and helps us under­stand that explor­ing grief and remem­ber­ing what we have lost is essen­tial to our spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion with God. Novem­ber weaves the poems in this col­lec­tion with that in mind. The first poem, ​“After Esav,” begins with the haunt­ing lines: 

Why are you not married?

the rab­bis of my ear­ly days

demand of me

in my rag­ing dreams.

Novem­ber then says, ​“I have scav­enged the world for answers,” which cre­ates a vis­cer­al ten­sion between sen­su­al­i­ty and holi­ness. He makes the metaphor real when he refers to ​“the burn­ing col­or of my hair”; since the title frames the poem about Esav, we under­stand the ref­er­ence to the Torah. Esav, the red-haired twin broth­er of Jacob in Gen­e­sis, who sym­bol­izes the antithe­sis of Judaism, ​“that great sin­ner whose body was lust dri­ven…”, is a metaphor for the speak­er and rep­re­sents the strug­gles he faces in his spir­i­tu­al jour­ney. The poem ends with a feel­ing of lament that elu­ci­dates the jour­ney: ​“and come away hun­gry as ever.” The hunger is a spir­i­tu­al one, one of desire and love, one of reck­on­ing with the trau­mas of pogroms and the Holocaust.

The image of fire first appears in the third poem of the book and serves as a thread that defines the spir­i­tu­al jour­ney we embark on. In the poem ​“After Bracha,” fire is hint­ed at in the bak­ing of strudels and stuffed cab­bage. The poem ​“Old Flames” is explic­it in its explo­ration of fire. First, as a love of fire­works. Then, Jung pro­claims: ​“The dif­fer­ence between a good life and a bad life is how well you walk through the fire.” In a metaphor­i­cal and lit­er­al flour­ish, Lester Perkins, who was a gui­tar play­er for John­ny Cash, dies from a house fire. In the last stan­za, the poem declares: ​“My love of fire end­ed before high school.” How­ev­er, the mean­ing fire has, what it can destroy, the food it can cook, works its way through poems after that dec­la­ra­tion. The poem ​“To Be Wicks” demon­strates Novem­ber’s deft use of rep­e­ti­tion. ​“we burn, we burn, we burn, we do not burn out.” It becomes clear that God works through the fires in the col­lec­tion, invit­ing us to reflect on our own spir­i­tu­al journeys. 

After poems filled with agony and despair, The Book of Lamen­ta­tions says: ​“The stead­fast love of the Lord nev­er ceas­es; His mer­cies nev­er come to an end; they are new every morn­ing.” It is a poignant mes­sage of hope despite the agony. The Bro­ken Heart is the Mas­ter Key builds on this text, writ­ten over 3,000 years ago. Towards the end of the book, the speak­er says: ​“time, like love, is a con­struct or illu­sion.” That con­struct is one of hope and faith — just like these poems, which are coura­geous and vul­ner­a­ble, unlock­ing painful and uplift­ing truths.