T’Shuvah: Poems by Richard Jeffrey Newman
Fernwood Press, 2023
T’Shuvah: Poems collects several sequences concentrating on a return to life from events that test the human condition. The author note defines t’shuvah as “repentance or atonement,” explaining that its root, “to return,” is a “central component of repentance within Judaism.”
The collection’s first section is Yom Kippur 5780, which offers long stanzas of short lines mimicking its content, a walk through a neighborhood. The details create immediacy, like noting a cat: “the slow, / inscrutable turn of its head / tracking each step.” These details also build familiarity of the “friend . . . usually perched / on the low wall at the corner of 73rd Street.” This walk is a well-known route to which “you” return. Causing even more immersion is the second person point of view: “you” listen, walk, observe, until several pages in the “I” appears: “I too am watching, / . . . / as the path you weave / . . . / revises the mental map / . . . / of my own early-AM treks.” The sequence becomes dreamlike as each new numbered subsection acts like a door to a different memory. We begin in present-day in the city and move to the Rabbi from 11th grade and an admission of not attending services; taking a “left out of the park, / onto the mountain trail in Darakeh / . . . / to Tehran’s bazaar;” and then “you’re stepping through the door at Thanksgiving.” The sequence uses the walk as a connection between then and now.
Do Not Wish for Any Other Life, the second sequence, links short poems. They begin with struggle: “What hangs around your neck will not take wing.” Each passage adds hope: “What draws you forward / through the faith you’ve lost will not desert you / . . . / What leaves the body leaves itself behind.” Whereas the first sequence offers a physical walk with vivid scenery, this sequence turns towards the inner mind using metaphoric diction to balance straightforward truth: “The past you grieve will rise. Wrap your tongue / around its root and pull.”
The section entitled Insomnia collects several separately titled poems in which memories of young loves show a balance of innocent, pithy rejections and if-only scenarios. The sonnet-inspired poems take on more adult love and loss, allowing the sequence to grow up as “you” grow up, too.
These three sequences build the foundation to the crescendo of This Sentence Is a Metaphor for Bridge, the final sequence. The first verse begins, “Take refuge in this path / the page gives you to roam.” These shorter verses, also sonnet-inspired, offer encouragement such as “Face your shame. / Then sweep the air / above your head / with flame.” The visceral imagery creates a cumulative effect of healing. This effect starts, “. . . you’ve confessed.” What comes next happens faster with more confidence: “Ride instead / this curve of language / like water down the face of a cliff.” These strong lines balance simple truth like “You cannot circumvent / . . . death,” but you can “Redeem the hunger you’ve survived.” Hope is juxtaposed with death. “The dead inhabit every step you take,” but that attachment does not have to hold anyone back. The speaker declares, “Let the rotting corpses / you have borne here / settle in the dust / . . . / shed everything that’s not a gift.”
This shedding comes through as the focus throughout. A neighborhood walk, a contemplation of merit, past love and loss, and a progression of healing all require letting go. Eloquent and challenging, the poems in T’Shuvah encourage, inspire, and remind us that healing is possible; catharsis is the greatest return.
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Christina M. Rau serves as Poet in Residence for Oceanside Library (NY). Her publications include How We Make Amends, What We Do To Make Us Whole, and the Elgin Award-winning Liberating The Astronauts. Her poetry also airs on Destinies: The Voice of Science Fiction radio show.