How do we reflect on our lives, at all their var­i­ous stages, and come to terms with who we are at the present moment? For Hamu­tal Bar-Yosef, it seems one way is through writ­ing poet­ry. The Mirac­u­lous Mis­take, Bar-Yosef’s sev­en­teenth poet­ry col­lec­tion, allows read­ers to appre­ci­ate the rich under­stand­ing gained when reflec­tion takes place from the dis­tance of time. 

Trans­lat­ed from Hebrew by Esther Cameron, The Mirac­u­lous Mis­take begins with ​“A Mem­o­ry,” a love­ly poem of learn­ing about agency as a child who wished to be missed but wasn’t. Bar-Yosef’s poems share lots of mem­o­ries — and what she learned from them. In much of her work, she mov­ing­ly cap­tures the voice and expe­ri­ences of a child grow­ing up in a Kib­butz when Israel was new.

Bar-Yosef’s poet­ry is informed by his­to­ry and gen­er­a­tional trau­ma. One such haunt­ing poem, ​“His­to­ry,” is full of heart­break­ing irony. In lit­tle more than half a page, we learn that, in 1939, Bar-Yosef’s moth­er dis­cour­aged her own moth­er from mov­ing from Europe to join her in Pales­tine because ​“Here you would not have ser­vants.” In the fol­low­ing stan­za, and just ten years lat­er, Bar-Yosef’s moth­er los­es her only son to war. 

Placed beside ​“His­to­ry” is ​“We Had,” anoth­er pow­er­ful poem of her family’s trau­ma. At Bar-Yosef’s bed­time, her moth­er describes sev­er­al objects she remem­bers from her child­hood home: stained glass win­dows, ​“a huge cel­lar full of cher­ry and plum jams,” and the col­or and intri­cate design of her fam­i­ly table­cloth. The poem ends with her mother’s good­night kiss: ​“I didn’t know why her cheeks were wet.”

There is a great deal Bar-Yosef didn’t know as a child about her family’s past; there was so much that could not be con­veyed direct­ly about the tremen­dous loss­es they expe­ri­enced dur­ing the Shoah. Instead, the trau­ma was passed on through images of objects that are no longer part of their lives.

Bar-Yosef, too, leaves a great deal unsaid. She trusts her read­ers to take what they need from the words on the page — and from the white space. Bar-Yosef writes about grief, as she’s had much to grieve — from her Euro­pean rel­a­tives who ​“elect­ed to stay in Rovno / and hope for the best,” to her broth­er buried on Mount Hert­zl, and, per­haps, most poignant­ly, to the son she lost to sui­cide. She writes about the loss­es of aging too: ​“Like a rob­bery at the cash reg­is­ter … the one who ages is robbed of the spright­ly steps / the sharp­ness of vision and speech.”

Bar-Yosef writes of life — her long, rich life. She acknowl­edges mis­takes, both hers and oth­ers’, with­out bit­ter­ness or regret. She’s come to respect her hard-earned wis­dom, as she cap­tures how com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships can be.

Bar-Yosef’s poems are full of sat­is­fy­ing twists and turns, and often humor, too. The col­lec­tion ends with a poem called ​“Love.” When life feels like too much, a small note of grace can shift it all: ​“Love pops up from nowhere for the drown­ing / like a gold­en straw.”

In a world full of suf­fer­ing, cur­rent and past, The Mirac­u­lous Mis­take is one ​“gold­en straw” of light.