Practice : Poems

by Bellm, Dan

• ISBN13: 9780976764250
• ISBN10: 0976764253
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-03-01
• Publisher: Small Pr Distribution

Summary

Poetry. Dan Bellm's third book of poems takes as its starting point the Jewish practice of studying weekly portions of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, in an annual cycle. Working in the midrashic tradition--imaginatively explaining or expanding a Biblical text, often well beyond its literal meaning--the poems offer meditations on faith, doubt, yearning, family ties, love and loss, and the age-old roots of modern-day war. In PRACTICE, we see a poet of extraordinary range and formal versatility, whose sonnets, villanelles, prose poems, and lyric inventions engage both the imagination and the heart. These poems are at once accessible and complex, deeply personal and profoundly universal.

Table of Contents

Parable	p. 3
Before words	p. 4
Skylight	p. 6
Psalm	p. 8
First evening prayer	p. 9
Esau	p. 11
Elegy / in advance / do not hasten	p. 12
July 4: Lot's wife	p. 16
Blessing him	p. 17
The lamp	p. 23
The portal	p. 25
The voice in the fire	p. 27
Poem (Celan)	p. 28
Brand new	p. 29
The crossing	p. 33
Keeping still (Neruda)	p. 34
The weight	p. 36
Falling	p. 38
Lament	p. 40
Practice	p. 45
Repair	p. 46
Milk	p. 47
Sacrifice	p. 49
A photograph by Weegee	p. 50
Clean	p. 51
Jacob's ladder	p. 52
While waiting	p. 53
Anointing	p. 54
Book of numbers (A war diary)	p. 59
For the years	p. 69
Blessing / Curse	p. 70
The turning	p. 72
Notes	p. 75
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