In The Living Room, Rearranged, Yael Grunseit uses the Babylonian Talmud — the basis of ancient Jewish law — to examine her views on desire, sexuality, and gender identity. Most of her book follows the same format as the Talmud, heightening the tension she’s trying to create. In fact, like the Talmud, some of the sentences are in a font so small that they’re difficult to read. Instead of pushing the reader away, however, the small font compels the reader toward a closer reading of Grunseit’s thoughts.
The Living Room, Rearranged is a short but dense book. It’s composed mostly of prose poetry that tells stories about the protagonist’s relationships with men and women. Some are realistic; others are fanciful. Most have an erotic element. The common thread across all of these stories is a search for truth. The language is simple but urgent — a difficult blend to achieve. For example, in these few lines, the protagonist tries to communicate with her lover:
Then she said, “Tell me what you want. Tell me the Truth.” I scrunched up my nose. I took her words and put them inside this little box made of lead that’s buried in my brain. Lead absorbs sound. Her breast fell into mine and I could feel her lips saying those same words on my neck.
The book also contains poems that are not necessarily in conversation with the Talmud. Grunseit’s language is always clear and direct, driving home her demand for honesty:
No matter how much we rearrange the living room,
cover the walls with collages
and the couches with crocheted blankets,
we both know all that happened.
Even though these stories and poems often stand in stark contrast to the Talmud, one never gets the sense that Grunseit is questioning the importance of the ancient text. Rather, she’s reinterpreting it to make it relevant. She’s creating her own midrash that focuses on the questions we have today: What’s the significance of gender? What’s desire — and how can it betray the kind of person we long to become?
Stewart Florsheim’s poetry has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. He was the editor of Ghosts of the Holocaust, an anthology of poetry by children of Holocaust survivors (Wayne State University Press, 1989). He wrote the poetry chapbook, The Girl Eating Oysters (2River, 2004). In 2005, Stewart won the Blue Light Book Award for The Short Fall From Grace (Blue Light Press, 2006). His collection, A Split Second of Light, was published by Blue Light Press in 2011 and received an Honorable Mention in the San Francisco Book Festival, honoring the best books published in the Spring of 2011. Stewart’s new collection, Amusing the Angels, won the Blue Light Book Award in 2022.
