My first book of poet­ry was just pub­lished in my six­ty-ninth year. Poet­ry was always inside me, but it lay dor­mant for decades — an inten­tion­al silenc­ing that I have reversed, anx­ious to make up for lost time. 

I remem­ber writ­ing poet­ry as far back as age ten. At six­teen, I had my first poet­ry pub­li­ca­tion in Hay­om, a Jew­ish stu­dent-run col­lege pub­li­ca­tion. After fol­low­ing a typ­i­cal route for a bud­ding poet — arts camp, edit­ing the lit­er­ary mag­a­zine in high school and col­lege, and study­ing cre­ative writ­ing in col­lege — I had a few ear­ly pub­li­ca­tions in my twen­ties. Then my life shifted. 

Or, bet­ter put, I shift­ed my life.

After pur­su­ing my under­grad­u­ate degree in cre­ative writ­ing, I enrolled in a mas­ters pro­gram in the same sub­ject; how­ev­er, I left the pro­gram and fell into com­mu­ni­ca­tions as a pro­fes­sion , first work­ing in pub­lish­ing and then in pol­i­tics, trade unions, non-prof­its, and phil­an­thropy (includ­ing decades of work in the Jew­ish pro­fes­sion­al world). 

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, I embarked on anoth­er child­hood dream of mine — work­ing as a jour­nal­ist over­seas. I craft­ed a sce­nario where I could take a month off work in the sum­mer to go over­seas to Israel and the West Bank and Gaza. It was in the days when there were still numer­ous print pub­li­ca­tions to write for and news­pa­pers still main­tained for­eign bureaus. I was a stringer for The Chica­go Tri­bune, had a col­umn in The For­ward, and wrote for a myr­i­ad of oth­er pub­li­ca­tions in the US and UK. 

I was drawn to jour­nal­ism in part because of my inter­est in telling peo­ple’s sto­ries and chron­i­cling events, but it was also a way to be a writer and not be alone. To be a lit­er­ary writer of any kind, you must spend hours — even days — alone with a blank page or com­put­er screen. When I was in my twen­ties, thir­ties, and even for­ties, I sim­ply could­n’t sit by myself and give myself time to write and to read. 

Poet­ry and jour­nal­ism are dif­fer­ent medi­ums, yet when I was writ­ing jour­nal­ism, I was very aware of how my poet­ry train­ing improved my work in this field. Some of these tools I learned while study­ing poet­ry are writ­ing to word count (or for poet­ry, ensur­ing there are no super­flu­ous words), search­ing out pre­cise details for sto­ry­telling, and cap­tur­ing the sur­round­ings of an inter­vie­wee in my writing. 

I start­ed to write poems again at age six­ty. Here’s why: My father died when he was fifty-nine and his birth­day is a day after mine. That’s when I thought to myself, ​“I’m a day old­er than my father.” Of course, I was­n’t. But this was such a poet­ic con­cept that I sat down and wrote a poem. It’s not a good poem, but it did its job. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, this was the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion. I was des­per­ate for some­thing ephemer­al, tran­scen­dent, and empa­thet­ic that could­n’t be impact­ed by the hor­rors of the con­tem­po­rary world. For me, that is lit­er­a­ture; indeed, art of all kinds. 

I used to think that poet­ry can’t real­ly make any­thing hap­pen. But, when I went back to it, I redis­cov­ered the pow­er of poet­ry to trans­form how we think and expe­ri­ence life, if we real­ly lis­ten to the words. Poet­ry can con­nect the dots, explain things, and illus­trate dif­fer­ent sides of a sto­ry. It expounds on emo­tions that are cen­tral to the cre­ation of all things beautiful.

These days, I write both poet­ry and jour­nal­ism. Some of the sto­ries I encounter in report­ing or research­ing opin­ion pieces make it into my poet­ry in a dif­fer­ent guise. I am care­ful to prac­tice feal­ty to the truth in my jour­nal­ism, but poet­ry has dif­fer­ent rules in this regard. Some­times, I only dis­cov­er the truth about my sub­ject when I write the poem. A good poem fol­lows no script. I begin in one place and end up in anoth­er; the process is unex­pect­ed and revelatory. 

I once start­ed a list of Jew­ish poets who influ­enced me. The list went on for sev­er­al pages, but among these poets are Muriel Rukeyser, Denise Lev­er­tov, Adri­enne Rich, Pri­mo Levi, Philip Levine, George Oppen, Max­ine Kumin, Yehu­da Amichai, Osip Man­del­stam, Jacob Glat­stein, and Stan­ley Kunitz. I was lucky enough to study with Amichai.

Poet­ry — like jour­nal­ism — can intro­duce peo­ple to an unfa­mil­iar real­i­ty. Good poet­ry asks the read­er to con­tem­plate some­thing new, to expe­ri­ence a dif­fer­ent reality. 

I hope that my poems will offer a bridge, espe­cial­ly on the Israel-Pales­tine divide. It’s pro­found­ly dis­heart­en­ing to wit­ness efforts to silence or boy­cott artis­tic voic­es. The poems in my book are unique pre­cise­ly because they offer the read­er a view into the lives of both Israelis and Pales­tini­ans, with love for both. I have a clear polit­i­cal posi­tion, which comes through in my poems. This won’t be to everyone’s lik­ing. But, this is a part of the world I love dear­ly and where I spend a sig­nif­i­cant amount of my time. Any­one read­ing these poems will see that, though my aim is to ensure that the poems are not polit­i­cal trac­tates. Every­one may not agree with me, but per­haps a read­er will find new appre­ci­a­tion for actu­al peo­ple, not sim­ply hold on to constructs. 

These poems are also influ­enced by Pales­tin­ian and Arab writ­ers, espe­cial­ly Mah­moud Dar­wish. A dear friend of mine told me that she was with both Dar­wish and Amichai when they were back­stage at a read­ing late in their lives, where they embraced each oth­er. My dream is that were they still alive, they would come togeth­er on stage with their poems, to find a way for­ward to a bet­ter future for everyone. 

Poet­ry can make a dif­fer­ence; we just need to lis­ten to the words and allow them to seep into our hearts and minds.