Do you teach in a religious setting? I’ve been a professor at three different Christian colleges and taught poetry workshops at my synagogue. From hymns and prayers to the Bible itself, these students have been steeped in poetry. But they often don’t know why the language moves them so much. Or, let’s be real here, they are sometimes just repeating words without fully participating. Poetic aspects of the prayers, which might seem like an obstacle, can actually be an on-ramp. This lesson (which I wrote as though talking to the students) explains juxtaposition, shows how it can work in our prayerbook (if you don’t happen to be in the Reform Jewish tradition, you can have the fun of finding the examples from your own tradition), and provides a guided writing activity for all levels.
Juxtaposition defined: Putting disparate elements next to each other? Poetry has a special word for that: juxtaposition. This technique asks us to consider how those things relate. (I often draw a Venn diagram to illustrate where the separate items can overlap in their attributes and connotations.) Putting a sneaker next to a ballet shoe maybe makes you think the everyday is elegant, powerful, fancy, hardworking. Putting the ballet slipper next to the sneaker might make you think a ballerina is normal to themselves. However, it can only create this power if the things are pretty different. A shoe next to a sock? Not juxtaposition.
One place we see it in our prayerbook: Why do we praise Adonai for strengthening our steps right after praise for stretching the earth over the waters? Maybe it’s because the prayer wants us to see that Adonai cares as much about us as the entire world. Or vice versa. By using juxtaposition, the prayer treats the worshipper like a partner, a full participant in the making of meaning, not just a receptor.
Writing directions for a poem featuring juxtaposition. (This is based on the prayers surrounding the Sh’ma in the Reform Jewish prayerbook.)
Stanza 1: Describe a moment when you feel awe. Perhaps when you see something in nature, an infant, the Torah being passed down in a bar mitzvah celebration, or a child being baptized.
Stanza 2: State a piece of wisdom from your holy texts or from an elder. What’s a favorite Bible quote? What’s something your father always said?
Stanza 3: Describe a time you felt freed or describe an experience at a seder or an adult baptism.
I always find it helpful to include an example, so here’s the poem I wrote based on this exercise:
Refuge
In the middle of the city, mist
rises over the lake. I can’t see but I know
the air is full of wings.
My mother always says without the poets,
God save us.
We were telling
the Passover story, our liberation,
when the doorbell rang.
It was my friend Sherry.
She needed to be away from her home.
She came to mine.
–
Deborah Bacharach is the author of Shake & Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her work has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, New Letters, Poet Lore, and The Writer’s Chronicle, among many other journals, and she has received a Pushcart Prize honorable mention.