A Poem I Love - Le Donne

I don't know poetry well enough to have an opinion that matters. But I was a founding member of the "Wood Shed Society" during my university days. This was an elite group of five college students who met for midnight poetry readings once a week for a couple years. So I have a bit of street cred in the Vancouver area, at least.

I was recently given a copy of Stephanie Barbé Hammer's wonderful collection of poems How Formal? I don't mind saying that some of these poems are breathtaking. I particularly like a poem called "Ars Judaica" which provides several windows into conversion experience - in this case, conversion to Judaism. This is something that I know nothing about. Really quite gripping. Here is a poem that I love:

~

Torah Bones

listen:

cradled for the first time in these arms

there is a clicking of sticks

a soft settling of joints

all ribs, spines, and shanks

this curious body's ungainly

cumbersomely easy to hold

strange

ancient child

whose flesh is

texts.

~

You can hear more from Stephanie at http://stephaniebarbehammer.net/

-anthony