Threshold

by Shirley Kaufman

Paper Book, 2003

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Available

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Publication

Port Townsend, Wash. : Copper Canyon Press, c2003.

Description

Shirley Kaufman has long been a house favorite at Copper Canyon, and we're celebrating her new book with a special price of $12.00. Born in the United States, Shirley Kaufman has lived for the past 20 years in Jerusalem, a city split by cultural and religious fault lines. In direct, sensitive language, Kaufman's poems occupy the shifting border between ordinary life and violence, Palestinian and Jew, young love and aging companionship. They grapple with the meaning of routine, of family, and of life among a daily existence punctured with bombs. Sometimes I need to be nowhere. A place without history. A life of wandering like the desert generation of Moses. The wandering Jew. But that brings me back into history. Sealed rooms. Windows criss-crossed with tape so the glass won't shatter. A dark noose of memory around my neck. Coffins covered with flags and flags burning. I need to be nowhere.--from "Sanctum" "There's such solidity to Shirley Kaufman's writing. . . . You feel in conversation with someone wise and passionate, someone you can trust."--Poetry Flash "Kaufman's poems flourish in the spaces between what is familiar and unfamiliar, between life in Israel and life in the U.S., and in those moments when the differences between Palestinians and Jews, mothers and daughters, history and the immediate moment play themselves out."--American Book Review "Kaufman is adept at revealing the human face behind politics, carefully accumulating familiar details to make a large portrait."--Publishers Weekly Shirley Kaufmanis the author of seven books of poetry and several translations from the Hebrew. Her awards include the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award. A native of Seattle, Kaufman now lives in Jerusalem.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member rmharris
Shirley Kaufman's work is an attempt to restore the reader's senses, to bring back our ability to take pleasure in small things. Closely observed and keenly felt, her latest book, Threshold, is filled with the finely-honed details of life. Kaufman's work as a translator, mainly of poems originally
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in Hebrew, has helped sharpen her eye for language and how it works. She sums up part of her poetic process in "Little love poem" this way:

I collect these words
like coins
in the bowls of beggars

they add up to
just enough to
keep going
Originally from the United States, Kaufman has lived in Israel for the past thirty years. The poems in Threshold also range from Seattle to Jerusalem in its subjects and concerns, from the "projective verse" style poems of its opening movement to later sections dealing with family and long-term love, Biblical figures (Adam, Rachel, Jacob) and the poet's role as historian and witness. While there is a love of life and the things of this world in her work, there is always sadness, a haunted sense lurking behind Kaufman's poetry. Even a New Year's celebration at the millennium causes her to reflect:

the twenty-first century
nothing
but sparks and flashes
collapsed
into dust

too many zeros
ending with smoke
Quietly political, Kaufman's work does not take sides in the conflicts in Israel or anywhere—"good guys / bad / what's the difference / if everyone fights" she writes—her work comes down very strongly in support of humanity, and the lives of those caught up in the meshes of violence. Resonant and deeply satisfying, Threshold is a solid, serious and ultimately moving work by a consummate and compassionate professional.
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