Tale of the Eastside Lantern’s Shon Wong and Rosa Cheng. (photo by David Cooper)
Among the many artists participating in this year’s Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival is Jewish community member Elliot Polsky. The multi-percussionist joins the Son of James Band in Tale of the Eastside Lantern, a workshop presentation of a new hybrid Chinese rock opera.
From Oct. 30 to Nov. 10, the annual Heart of the City offers 12 days of music, stories, theatre, poetry, cultural celebrations, films, dance, readings, forums, workshops, discussions, gallery exhibits, mixed media, art talks, history talks and history walks. More than 100 events are scheduled to take place at more than 40 locations throughout the Downtown Eastside. This year’s theme – “Holding the Light” – has emerged from the need of Downtown Eastside-involved artists and residents to illuminate the vitality and relevance of the Downtown Eastside community and its diverse traditions, knowledge systems, ancestral languages, cultural roots and stories.
Tale of the Eastside Lantern is one of the top festival picks: “In the streets and shops of Vancouver’s Chinatown, Jimmy wrestles with his personal demons and sets out to solve a mystery that is guarded by Chinese opera spirits of the underworld. Jimmy is led by the sounds of rock music and motivated by the oldest feeling in the world … love.” Written and composed by Shon Wong and directed by Andy Toth, the rock opera is produced by Vancouver Cantonese Opera and Son of James Band in partnership with Vancouver Moving Theatre. Performed in English and Cantonese, the workshop presentation takes place Oct. 31, 8 p.m., at CBC Studio 700. Tickets ($15) are available at the door or in advance from eastsidelantern2.eventbrite.ca.
Another top pick is Sis Ne’ Bi -Yïz: Mother Bear Speaks, written and performed by Taninli Wright (Wet’suwet’en) about her Messenger of Hope Walk – she walked 1,600 kilometres across British Columbia to give voice to First Nations children and other marginalized youth. Developed in collaboration with Laura Barron, Jason Clift, Julie McIsaac and Jessica Schacht, the play is produced by Instruments of Change. There are several performances Oct. 30-Nov. 3 at Firehall Arts Centre. For advance tickets ($20/$15), call 604-689-0926 or visit [email protected].
Written and performed by Yvonne Wallace (Lilwat) and directed by Jefferson Guzman, ūtszan (to make things better) follows the journey of a woman to reclaim her language; in the process, she uncovers indigenous knowledge, humour, strength and resilience. The play has three shows at the Firehall Oct. 31-Nov. 2, with tickets ($20/$15) available at the door and in advance.
Of special interest to the Jewish community, whose oral histories form part of Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter’s Opening Doors: Vancouver’s East End, is the dramatization of that book, which was first published in 1979. Directed by Donna Spencer and co-produced by the Firehall and Vancouver Moving Theatre, Opening Doors has several performances Nov. 6-9 at the Firehall, with tickets $20/$15.
While there are these and other ticketed shows, most of the festival events are free to attend. For example, on Nov. 2, 11 a.m., at CRAB Park, there is a mini-landing of canoes, featuring a welcome ceremony, after which paddlers and guests journey on land to the Police Museum and the exhibition Healing Waters, an exploration of how communities heal through connecting to cultural practice. This landing, in honour of the inaugural Pulling Together canoe journey in 2001, launches a year of story gathering and history sharing in preparation for the 20th anniversary celebration of the Pulling Together Society at next year’s Heart of the City.
In Speaking in Tongues, guests Woody Morrison, David Ng, Grace Eiko Thomson and Dalannah Gail Bowen discuss mother tongues and how their interactions can give birth to hybrid languages such as Japanese Pidgin, which is unique to the West Coast of Canada. This conversation is part of Homing Pidgin, an interactive installation by Haruko Okano, and takes place on Nov. 2, 1 p.m., at Centre A (205-268 Keefer).
Meanwhile, Irreparable Harm? is by Sinister Sisters Ensemble – activists and theatre folk, young and old, First Nations and settlers, many of whom were arrested in the protests against the twinning of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. It uses videos, transcripts of the court proceedings and statements that were read in the courtroom to shine a light on the justice system. It is at Carnegie Theatre on Nov. 8, 3 p.m.
Jack Rootman, in front of his painting “Homage to Degas.” (photo by Olga Livshin)
Jack Rootman’s new solo show, Scene at Night, opens tomorrow, June 1, at the Visual Space Gallery on Dunbar Street. As the name implies, the exhibition is dedicated to Rootman’s paintings of urban night scenes.
“There are several reasons I’m interested in painting the night,” he said in an interview with the Independent. “First, I wanted to show human activity as it is spotlighted at night. People move from one light source to another, from the indoor balcony to the moving lights of cars. You don’t see it so focused during the day. When you look in the daytime, there is a panorama in front of you, your attention wanders; there is too much to see. But, at night, you see activity encapsulated. Someone drinks coffee. Someone crosses a street. Someone is sad or crying or laughing. Your attention is drawn to a spot of light.”
The second reason for his fascination with the nocturnal setting has to do with the constantly changing colours and contrasts. “There are many light sources wherever you are at night – streetlights, lights from the windows, moonlight – and each combination gives off different colour nuances and shadows, depending on where you stand, on the angle of your view,” he explained.
Rootman thinks an element of colour always exists, even at night, when there is a “dynamic blackness. If you look at my paintings,” he said, “there is red black and purple black, blue black and green black.”
Night’s more limited spectrum of colours intrigues and challenges the artist. “Of course, it is more difficult to paint night, to see colours in the darkness,” he said. “Sometimes, I have to use Photoshop to analyze what colours appear in a photograph, before I transfer the image to an oil painting.”
Rootman started painting night scenes years ago, although the bulk of the 22 paintings in the current exhibit have been created in the past five years. During his travels, he took many photographs at night in Paris, Venice, New York and Montreal. He also made sketches and recorded the colours as he saw them. But his paintings never follow the photos to the letter. One painting, a ribbon of light, might be an abstract representation of the night traffic along a boulevard, based on a photo taken from the balcony of his hotel room. Another might be a composition of images from different years and cities.
“My painting ‘Homage to Degas’ is one such a composition,” he said. “I saw this marijuana shop in Vancouver and it reminded me of a Degas painting. I included two of his paintings in this piece.”
In addition to the technical challenges of depicting a city scene at night, Rootman is interested in the loneliness that is most profound at night. “During the day,” he said, “we are at work, but the night brings isolation. It also brings possibilities – many people are lonely, and they go out during the night to meet others.”
“Ice Cream,” by Jack Rootman, is among the works featured in his solo show, Scene at Night, which opens June 1 at the Visual Space Gallery.
Some of the paintings show this disconnection. Everyone is absorbed in what they are doing, alone in their own spots of light, talking on their cellphone or lost in thought, and darkness separates them from one another.
“The night is also traditionally associated with a sense of danger,” the artist mused. “Several paintings in this series are lanes, particularly lanes in downtown Vancouver. Anything could hide in such a lane, with insufficient light: from rats to human predators.”
While his lanes are bleak, despite the illumination of neon signs and streetlights, there is always hope in Rootman’s paintings. Perhaps his medical background brings that sense to the fore of everything he does, both in his professional field of eye surgery and in his art.
“My most comfortable mental state is when I’m doing something creative and visual,” he said. “It works for my art. It also worked for my job as a surgeon, before I retired. Surgery is very creative. Like art, surgery is a discovery. Nothing is ever as you expected.”
And, like in his medical practice, where every patient had a story, all of his paintings are stories, too, stories of danger and loneliness, separation and connection, all linked together by darkness and light.
“My work has a certain affiliation with music and poetry,” said Rootman. “That’s why I decided to have a music night and a poetry night as parts of this show.”
The music night with Amicus Ensemble will be held at the gallery on June 5, 6-8 p.m., and the poetry night the next evening, June 6, 6-8 p.m. Scene at Night is at the Visual Space Gallery until June 9.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Almost half of Adeena Karasick’s latest volume of poetry, Checking In (Talonbooks, 2018), is comprised of whimsical Facebook status updates, most of which have deeper meaning on second and third thought. Together, they speak, as the book’s description notes, “to our seemingly insatiable desire for information, while acknowledging how fraught that information can be.”
“It was a totally compulsive exercise over four years, where literally everything I read or watched or where I went or what I heard was fodder for the text,” Karasick told the Independent about the faux updates’ origins. “And, I must admit, I threw away as many lines as I kept.
“Sometimes, it was just that I couldn’t get a song out of my head and then would just riff on it,” she said, giving as examples, “Ulysses is listening to Siren Song on Spotify”; “Gustave Klimt is listening to KISS”; and “Salvador Dali is doing the Time Warp. Again.”
Sometimes, she said, it was linguistically driven, such as, “E & G are saying F off” and “Bold italics are refusing to move into an upright position.” Or, “it was just pure, silly fun” to create updates like “William Wordsworth is wandering lonely on iCloud,” “Edvard Munch is watching Scream 3,” “Google is mapping the territory” and “Narcissus is using his selfie stick.”
“It was so obsessive,” said Karasick, “that even now that the book’s been published, my brain is so wired to creating those one-liners, I walk around the streets reading every sign and riff on them: ‘Thin Lizzy is watching her carbs,’ ‘Fatwa is doing a cleanse,’ ‘The Pre-Pesach Jew is clearing her cookies,’ ‘The Long, Long Sleeper is Woke.’”
Karasick’s sense of play is evident throughout Checking In. Even when describing heartbreak, confusion and other emotionally charged states, the joy she derives from words, from language and from constructing layers of meaning, is obvious.
“I think I’ve always had a really dark sense of humour,” she said, “and there’s something about taking that which is frightening or deeply disturbing and disempowering it – by not so much making fun of it, but ironically or parodically making it strange, decontextualizing it, hyberbolically defamiliarizing it.
“A lot of my work takes hard-hitting political issues, whether that be the Holocaust in Genrecide (Talonbooks, 1994) and superimposing it with the policing and massacring of language, or dealing with 9/11 in The House That Hijack Built (Talonbooks, 2004).… ‘There was a Big Building that Swallowed a Plane … How Insane to Swallow a Plane….’ A sense of jouissance (pleasure, play) really permeates all that I do. There’s nothing more exhilarating for me than playing inside language, finding unexpected liaisons, connections, sound clusters. It’s a type of erotics of the text that is for me very jewy; that jouissance, a jewy essence: all diasporic, nomadic, exilic, ex-static.
“I see this ‘play’ as operating with an ‘assimilationist’ brand of Jewish humour,” she explained, “not of bombastic neurosis, but one that threatens to unleash chaos, creates unsocialized anarchy, embodies unpredictability – impassioned, engaged, shticky, outrageous and earnest all at the same time – in a post-Woody Allen/Jon Stewart/ Sarah Silverman/Sandra Bernhardish kind of way. And, sometimes, it’s audacious, subversive, provocative and, in the true definition of ‘irony,’ explodes ontologically and cuts into the fabric of things; the smooth functioning of the quiet comfortability or the ‘homeyness’ of our world. That is the role of art.”
Adeena Karasick’s newest collection of poetry is Checking In. (photo by Safia Karasick Southey/talonbooks.com)
And one cannot separate Karasick’s art from her Jewish heritage – it’s “part of my DNA,” she said – and from her study of Jewish texts. With a PhD in kabbalah and deconstruction, it is not surprising that, in speaking about the concept of play, she pointed to 13th-century kabbalistic mystic Avraham Abulafia’s Science of the Combination of Letters, in which, she said, “we are instructed to play inside the language, using ancient practices of recombinatoric alchemy, gematriatic (numerological) substitution, combination, and, through lettristic ‘skips’ and ‘jumps’ slippage, meaning is infinitely re-circulated.
“According to kabbalistic thinking,” she said, “we are commanded to permute and combine the letters; focus on them and their configurations, permutations; combine consonants into a swift motion, which heats up your thinking and increases your joy and desire so much, that you don’t crave food or sleep and all other desires are annihilated. And nothing exists except the letters through which the world is being recreated, through a continual process of constructing and reconstructing borders, orders, laws, mirrors, screens, walls…. And, in accordance with the strictures of Abulafian play, to properly play is to travel inside the words within words, traces, affects, projections, sliding and slipping between the forces and intensities distributed through the texts’ syntactic economy. And this very play speaks both to how everything is infinitely interconnected – reverberant with our social, consumerist, communicative patterns – generating a contiguous infolding of meaning.”
She connected this type of play to “the actual conversation habits of Yiddish.”
“According to etymologist Michael Wex – in his Just Say Nu (Harper: New York, 2007) – Yiddish itself is inscribed in derailment, evasion, avoidance, where the norm is not to be ‘clear’ but to ‘seduce and lead astray,’ to say the reverse of whatever’s been said. For example, as we know, to say, ‘Hi, how are you,’ ‘Shalom aleichem,’ the answer is ‘Aleichem shalom.’ Answers are answered with a question, repetition, reversals, circumlocutions, interruptions, insertions (ptoo, ptoo, ptoo). Compliments are avoided in favour of their opposite. Or, like how you should never say what you mean because naming something (such as cancer, leprosy, pig) could bring it into existence.”
As for her own existence, Karasick said, “All my life, I’ve been fiercely drawn to all that seems enigmatic or paradoxical, and get great pleasure in connecting the unconnectable; drawing from different genres, lexicons or mediums and reveling in ways they inform each other in radical and innovative ways, inviting us to see the world anew.”
While she has spent years teaching philosophic and critical theory, and media and pop culture at various universities, as well as attending lectures on media ecology and ontology, she also watches “a lot of trashy TV,” she said. “I like classical jazz and MTV videos. I read [Louis] Zukofsky, [Slovoj] Zizek and Vogue magazine. And my favourite thing to do is to mash these language systems together into a kind of linguistic tzimmes; each flavour, taste, texture informing the other, expanding the palette.
“It’s especially exciting for me to break down that binary between high and low culture; draw from the music hall and the circus, erotics and spirituality; and play with ways all of this information erupts as a palimpsestic web of both sacred and secular echo-poetic referents.”
Karasick writes “on the road, on buses, trains, subways, boats; in motion,” she said. “I write best amid the bustle of life and, oddly, when I’m really busy is when I’m most inspired. I’m always hunting and gathering, drawing on the world around me. Though, I must say, when drenched in aching nostalgia, frustrated by contemporary politics or steeped in throbbing desire is when the work especially flows.”
Approaching the poetry
“Contour XLV: With Asura,” “Lorem Ipsum” and “In Cold Hollers” are all “homophonic translations, and so they all fall under the same rubric,” said Karasick of three of the poems in Checking In during a brief poetry lesson over the phone.
She explained, “Each of these [works] take the same sounds of an original poem by somebody else and I’ve translated them. I’ve done an avant-garde, post-modern translation by using the same sounds and rhythms of the original poems but changing all the words, so that if one read it simultaneously with the original poem, it would sound like the same poem, but it’s completely different. It’s a way of commenting on the previous piece; it’s translating it, moving through and across different modes.”
“In Cold Hollers” is a translation of Charles Olson’s 1953 poem “In Cold Hell, In Thicket”; “Contour XLV: With Asura” is based on “Canto 45 with Usura,” a poem by Ezra Pound, which Karasick described as a “famously antisemitic, women-hating, Jews and women are pigs kind of poem”; and “Lorem Ipsum,” which is in English, but plays on the sounds of the Latin of Cicero’s “De finibus bonorum et malorum” (“On the Ends of Goods and Evils”). “Lorem ipsum is the standard placeholder text used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation,” writes Karasick elsewhere. “I am interested in exploring how the notion of ‘place holding’ gets reworked through an impossible relationship both in love and in language.”
As to how to approach a poem that you’ve never read before, Karasick said, “On one level, it depends on how deeply one wants to penetrate the text. The way I like to read is to not worry about what everything means per se, but rather … in reading, I think the most important thing is to feel the text, to go inside and feel its rhythms, its textures…. I work a lot with sound, so I’m really interested how sound itself communicates meaning and so, therefore, a lot of this type of work is about moving with the rhythms and the textures and some of that crazed emotion, how that bleeds through, just through the way that it sounds and feels in your mouth.”
Turning to the poem “Lorem Ipsum,” she said the words mean “pain itself.” She has translated Cicero’s treatise on the theory of ethics into a “passionate love poem” about the “difficulties and grueling angst that one traverses through that. Just like love itself, or pain itself, isn’t something that’s easily definable, so it is with the poem itself, which takes us through this journey of multiple ways that are easily comprehensible and other parts that are strangely defamiliarized and confusing because these very strong emotions are fiercely that…. Just like in life, you come across things that are completely foreign and impenetrable, so, similarly, the poem interweaves through the familiar and the defamiliar, the expected and that which completely takes you into new arenas of wonder and confusion.”
Karasick similarly takes Pound’s “Canto 45” and, playing with the Yiddish word asura, which means forbidden, and the English word usury, creates a new work that’s both a scathing commentary on Pound’s, as well its own poem, with its own meanings.
About “In Cold Hollers,” Karasick said she used the word “hollers” because it’s “homophonically related to hell, but it’s hollering in, calling back into Charles Olson’s original ’53 piece; and his original title, ‘In Cold Hell, In Thicket,’ refers to the opening of Dante’s ‘Inferno.’ What seems simple, it just has layers and layers and layers of history, literary history, philosophical history, as well.”
The title of Olson’s poem refers particularly to “selva oscura,” she said, “which is the dark wood that Dante wanders into in the middle of his life … so Olson’s poem, which riffs on that, is a similar excursion into a visionary experience, where he struggles to come up with a new understanding … from his own midlife … putting a voice to his own time. It is a personal drama of experience, conflict; it really speaks to the wrenching process of living and loving that, by turns, is grueling and funny and dramatic and trivial. My translation of that is dealing with all of those things and, in a way, it’s like, do you remember that old Gwen Stefani song, ‘I Ain’t No Hollaback Girl’? – I am a hollaback girl. I am hollering back, in cold hollers, to this cold hell, and basically calling into that history of both Dante and Olson, the history of post-modernism, 65 years later.”
In talking about Olson’s work and hers, Karasick said, “I sometimes like thinking of translation as trans-elation because you can never really translate anything because of culture and all the different references – in my piece, in my trans-elation, the attention is focused on a world of connected life, the personal, the political, the poetic as a system of relations. And, lastly … highlighting how the words themselves are imaginative participants; the words themselves are creating and recreating the sense of connecting the personal, the political, the poetic.”
And it’s not just the words, but how they are placed on a page that matters in poetry. So, for example, Karasick’s “In Cold Hollers” not only plays on the sound and meaning of Olson’s poem, but also mirrors its typography. “I wanted to keep it very much as he had it,” she said of where the lines break and other aspects of the formatting.
“The notion of the physicality and the materiality of where the words are placed on the page has just as much meaning as what they are communicating. We’re so often used to looking at the left margin … but I want the phrases to be moving and fluid, and that sense of how the white space between the words is equally as important as the words themselves. We can go back to kabbalah and the black fire on white fire, that the whole page becomes a series of fiery energy.”
Among the writers being featured at this year’s Word Vancouver, which runs Sept. 26-30, is Victoria-based poet Barbara Pelman.
Pelman’s latest collection, narrow bridge (Ronsdale Press, 2017), is her third book of poetry. Its title comes from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s famous advice (at least in Jewish circles): “All the world is a narrow bridge – the important thing is not to be afraid at all.” Other than in one poem, however, called “Öresund,” where she tells herself, “I will not fear,” Pelman doesn’t come across in her writing as fearful.
“I’m delighted that I don’t come across as fearful,” Pelman told the Independent, “as I am full of fear, and certainly before each visit to my family in Sweden, I imagined everything that could go wrong and how incompetent I am. And was amazed that I survived intact.
“Generally, I tend to be a worrier (‘a misuse of the imagination’) but fight this negativity all the time. The tension, which I hope comes across, is between a general optimism and belief that, ‘in the long run’ … things sort themselves out. So, I tend to take on things that might terrify me, like art classes or solo trips to Berlin or train rides through Europe, and sign up, so there’s no going back. Not, however, bungee jumping or skydiving.
“When I have to deal with adversity – a separation and divorce, primarily – I talk and I write,” she said. “Both are clarifying agents. The poems in this book put forward a lot of my difficulty in being in the present, without wishing to be elsewhere. As in the first poem, ‘Gentle Reader’ – the desire to desire only what you have, and not what is somewhere else.”
On the family front, at least, Pelman’s journeys have become shorter since the book was published. Her daughter, who had been living in Sweden for three years, moved to Vancouver this summer, meaning that Pelman’s grandson is also now that much closer. He features in more than one poem – “Still Life with a Small Boy” is especially poignant. In it, he and his bubby, Pelman, are out having a hot chocolate and croissant. “Heads together, bending into each other. / They are a world. Outside, the world breaks. / She cannot read the news while she is with him, / tries to be calm, listen while he tells her / his new red bike helmet makes him safe.”
The collection is divided into three sections and includes some poems that Pelman has published before. Her previous books of poetry are One Stone (Ekstasis Editions, 2005) and Borrowed Rooms (Ronsdale Press, 2008), and she also has produced a chapbook, Aubade Amalfi: The Marcello Poems (Rubicon Press, 2016).
“This book had three iterations, each time being sent back by the publisher with suggestions – too much of Marcello and the adorable grandson, for example,” she said of the decision-making process for what would make it into narrow bridge. “So, I rejigged the poems, took out a lot of them, put in more recent ones, and relied on Russell [Thorburn] to put them in order. He sees an organic pattern of the poems, sometimes based on image or theme. I trust his choices, only changed a few.”
The poems in narrow bridge include many with Jewish themes.
“Most of my childhood centred around the synagogue, not in a hugely observant fashion, but, as my father was choir leader at the Beth Israel, I often went to services with him,” Pelman said about the place of Judaism and Jewish culture in guiding her work or approach to life. “Now, as a member of Congregation Emanu-El [in Victoria] and ‘den mother’ for the Calling All Artists project, I am interested and involved in learning Hebrew, chanting Haftorah, and generally intrigued by the culture and traditions of an ancient people.
“Moreover, and this is what I think is really wonderful, poetry and study of Torah have many similarities. Hebrew is a language that I think is embedded in metaphor, and studying Torah is the kind of layering analysis that I am used to in studying poetry. Layer upon layer of meaning and ambiguity. Rabbi Harry Brechner considers art as ‘mishnah’: another way to interpret, to find meaning that is relevant to us personally and globally.”
In narrow bridge, Pelman explores kabbalistic ideas, her own family history and relationships, as well as biblical ones (the poem “Isaac” is powerfully evocative). In at least two poems, she explores the concept of “thisness” – notably in the poem of that name, where, she writes, “Happiness, fed from detail: the thisness of things, / resting in the eye of the beetle, the creak of the board / she leans against, the cold air pricking her ears.” And several poems have to do with the spaces or pauses between, for example, a heartbeat or a pendulum’s swing; those moments that happen all the time but that we rarely acknowledge or even notice.
Aging features prominently, as well. And, while some poems are wistful – such as “Suitcase in the Closet,” where recollections of past travel suffice – others are almost calls to arms. “A woman over seventy should open her travel account, / run her fingers over the globe, and choose / She should trade her sensible shoes for sandals, / her Gucci bag for backpack, her datebook for weather reports,” begins the poem “Go,” a favourite in this collection, though this reader is still a couple of decades shy of 70.
As for how her style or subject matter has changed since her first collection, Pelman said, “I have continued to work with various poets in workshops and retreats, and continue to learn a great deal from poet friends and reading. I think my poems have become shorter, a bit more compressed. I am aware of the musicality of the poem – the cadence, the pacing, the rhythm. But the struggles are still there: how to get started, how to edit, how to know when a poem is done. I have a huge file on my computer, called ‘Working On.’
“And my subject matter has changed as my life has changed,” she said. “The first book dealt with the divorce and finding a new identity; the second book included the death of my father; this book is about travel, and daughters, and grandsons, and the new life of retirement. About balance. But there are still hummingbirds in the hawthorn tree. Jasmine and tulips. Old lovers and mothers.”
Pelman is at Word Vancouver on Sept. 30, 1:20 p.m., in the Suspension Bridge tent at Library Square Conference Centre, one of three poets participating in “Another Taste of Poetry.” She also joins two other poets in Ronsdale’s Fall Poetry Showcase at Dunbar Public Library on Nov. 7, 6:30 p.m.
For more about Word Vancouver – where Jewish community members Mark Winston and Claire Sicherman will also share their work, at 1:20 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., respectively on Sept. 30 in the Alma VanDusen Room at Library Square – visit wordvancouver.ca. The interim manager of the festival this year is community member Bonnie Nish.
“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last for which the first was made …” begins the poem “Rabbi Ben Ezra” by Robert Browning. Meanwhile, his wife, Elizabeth, immortalized their relationship in her poem, “How Do I Love Thee?” which is an exquisite expression of love, and how it can change a life.
The couple met when Elizabeth was 38 and Robert was 34. After a courtship carried on primarily through letters, they married secretly in 1846, and Elizabeth ran away with Robert to live with him in Italy. Her tyrannical father disowned her – the family was fabulously wealthy from Jamaican rum and slaveholdings, and he thought Robert was a gold digger. The Brownings had a son in 1848.
Elizabeth died in 1861 after a brilliant literary career that, for a time, eclipsed her husband’s – she was considered for the post of England’s poet laureate after the death of William Wordsworth. Robert died in 1889.
“Rabbi Ben Ezra” was published in the collection of poems Dramatis Personae in 1864. Very briefly, it says that, whatever has come before in our lives is but a prelude to what our lives are, and will be.
How many of us have had some event in our histories that we can point to as a crossroad, such as that the Brownings experienced? For most of us, it is hard to think of our past as merely leading us to something even more important. And yet, there is a germ of truth here, whatever our experiences.
For me, I have reason to find some contentment in what I assess are my accomplishments after a life spanning eight decades. And yet, and yet … I know that the things I cherish as worthwhile are known best only by me. There are no plaques or monuments, no citations, few remembrances of my name. The physical evidence of my passage lies in the offspring I contributed to bringing into being. They, every one of them, are self-made, the products of the sum total of their individual efforts to which I can make only a small claim.
Truly, for most of us still around to gaze at life’s battlefield, all we have is what we can make of the day that lies ahead. We can take pleasure in the comfort of a leisurely day in the sun. We can intervene in the life of someone near and dear, or even a stranger, and try to help. We can become active on an issue of public import that we have in the past supported in our minds alone. Given our life experience at any moment in time, we have appreciations and understandings we never could have had before that time, even though our past is what led us to where and who we are.
Like Robert Browning, I do have a momentous event in my life to announce from the rooftops. And I take full credit for being an important party to the life-changing event. Truly, for me, it was “the last for which the first was made.”
For most of us, the lives we arrange do not turn out as we hoped. For example, we all seek relationships in which we can love and be loved in return. Regardless of the positive outcomes that come from pursuing these relationships in good faith, our aspirations are not always fully met.
I was entranced by a creature of the opposite sex in my teenage years, but a lack of self-confidence and courage prevented me from advancing my offering. We both passed on to other partners, and I did not seriously develop a plan of action until I reached widowerhood at the age of 70, some 55 years later. Knowing my intended was also unattached, after planning my approach, almost a year later, I strongly pressed my case. It was my good fortune that I was accepted as a marriage partner.
One does not make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear without a good deal of re-engineering. We have now been together for more than 12 years, a period of learning by both parties.
What’s happening at your house?
Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.
Salomé: Woman of Valor will have its world première at the Chutzpah! Festival March 8-10. (image by Anya Ross, graphics by John Greenaway)
There have been many interpretations of Salomé – thought to be the woman whose alluring dance persuaded King Herod to honour her request that he have John the Baptist beheaded – but none quite like that of Salomé: Woman of Valor, which has its world première at Chutzpah! March 8-10.
The creation of this complex, multilayered work that combines poetry, music, dance and film was led by composer and trumpeter Frank London and poet and performer Adeena Karasick. It features live music by London, percussionist Deep Singh and keyboard player Shai Bachar. The poetry is written and performed by Karasick, the dance choreographed and performed by Rebecca Margolick and Jessie Zaritt, and the video analyzing Charles Bryant’s 1923 silent film Salomé was made by Elizabeth Mak. The whole production is directed by Alex Aron.
“Frank was intrigued by the Salomé story due to the visual cornucopia of the Bryant film, and because it is a story where dance was at the centre, motivating the complex chain of events, and thus ripe for reinvention as a contemporary dance-theatre piece incorporating Bryant’s imagery,” Karasick told the Independent about why the work focuses on Salomé and not another Jewish historical or literary woman. “However, he was only aware of the [Oscar] Wilde retelling of the Salomé story and thus not really interested in her narrative. He came to me to see if I could reenvision her story in a more compelling way.”
It has always bothered her, said Karasick, how, within Christian mythology and entrenched in history by writers like Wilde, Gustave Flaubert and Stéphane Mallarmé and artists such as Gustav Klimt, Gustave Moreau and Aubrey Beardsley, “Salomé was seen as yet another Jewish temptress/Christian killer – but, in fact, there isn’t any evidence to substantiate this claim. According to apocrypha and Josephus’s Antiquities, she came from Jewish royalty and there is no evidence she murdered John the Baptist or even danced for Herod,” said Karasick.
“The only historical reference that [Herod’s wife] Herodias’s daughter’s name was Salomé is from Flavius Josephus, who makes no other claims about her – not that she danced for Herod, not that she demanded John’s head, but only that she went on to marry twice and live peacefully. The other apocryphal reference is that a daughter danced for Herod, which caused him to lose his mind and kill John the Baptist. Thus, the conflagrated Salomé that appears in the Wilde play, [Richard] Strauss opera and all subsequent productions, is an amalgamated construct, so we felt it was our duty to set the record straight.”
In fact, added Karasick, there are three women named Salomé in Jewish history: Salomé, daughter of Herodias and Herod II (circa 14-71 CE); Queen Salomé, her great-aunt (65 BCE-10 CE); and Salomé Alexandra (139-67 BCE).
“Her great-aunt, Salomé I, was the powerful sister and force behind Herod the Great, king of Judea and Second Temple rebuilder,” said Karasick, while Salomé Alexandra (also known as Shelomtzion) was one of only two women who reigned over Judea.
“I wanted my Salomé, Salomé of Valor, to carry the weight of both her genetic lineage and the cultural heredity of her name, embodying the legacy and power of the women that came before her,” said Karasick.
Karasick, who was born in Winnipeg, grew up in Vancouver, earning her bachelor’s from the University of British Columbia. She did her master’s at York University and her PhD at Concordia University. Among other things, she teaches literature and critical theory at Pratt Institute in New York, is co-founding artistic director of KlezKanada and performs her work around the world. The author of nine books – with a 10th, Checking In, published by Talonbooks, on the way – she has been awarded for her contributions to feminist thinking and, last year, the Adeena Karasick Archive was established at Special Collections, Simon Fraser University.
London – a member of the Klezmatics and the group Hasidic New Wave, who has performed with countless musicians and made numerous recordings of his own – saw Karasick perform in New York in 2011. He then hired her, she said, “along with Jake Marmer to design and lead the poetry retreat at KlezKanada…. We hadn’t yet collaborated before this, but I was always compelled by his music and the breadth of all he created as a masterful revolutionary himself, not only as a spectacularly fierce trumpet player but virtuosic composer, reinvigorating klezmer music, transcendentally intermixing it with aspects of world music, jazz, Chassidic new wave, punk – and always felt it would be a thrilling and highly symbiotic artistic match.”
When Frank approached her about the Salomé project, said Karasick, they both “fell in love with the Bryant film but were so perplexed” about Salomé’s “reputation in cultural history.”
So, Karasick started researching, “poring through the multiple and conflict[ing] narratives – through Josephus and the apocrypha, locating the many discrepancies between Christian and Jewish mythologies, speaking with specialists in the field, and became fascinated with how there are so many ‘truths,’ stories, misreadings, and how imperative it is to question these grand narratives, problematize traditional cultural, moral and religious perspectives.
“For millennia,” she said, “Jews have been portrayed as the murderers of gods and prophets in other people’s mythologies, so Salomé: Woman of Valor deconstructs this mythology, exposing how she was not a demonic murderess, and opens up the possibilities for infinite retelling and how truth itself is always a construct of veiling and unveiling.”
About the magnitude of the project, Karasick said, “As the author of nine books invested in issues of ethnicity, gender and ways to construct meaning, as professor of poetry and critical theory, gender images in the media, and poetics and performance, Salomé: Woman of Valor is a logical progression in my 30-year career, and has allowed me to integrate my experiences in one work – something that I have never done before.
“Due to the scope of this show,” she said, “I’m able to weave together the multiple styles of writing that I’ve experimented with over the years – sound poetry, homophonic translations, post-language conceptualism, kabbalistic and feminist revisionist practices, all syntactically playful, polyphonic, ironic and rhythmically complex – a fusion of my esthetic passions and expertise; opening a space of female empowerment.”
While London has been involved in many projects, Karasick said Salomé might be the first for him with performance poetry at the centre.
“We created Salomé: Woman of Valor as an integration of performance poetry, dance, music and video exploring the dialectic between narrative and abstraction – it is a quantum leap forward in collaborative artistic development, challenging my conceptual processes of making an artwork,” she said. “I couldn’t be more excited.”
Salomé: Woman of Valor is already being presented in an array of venues and contexts, said Karasick. “Its form and content make it appropriate to be presented at jazz, dance, poetry, new theatre, literary and electronic literature festivals; in performing arts centres, universities, avant garde text-based multimedia events, as well as events focusing on new media and cross arts,” she said.
“With its feminist and mystical kabbalistic take on Jewish historical subject matter and a live score which draws from East European Jewish music (klezmer) with jazz, Arabic and Indian musics, our Salomé is especially attractive to Jewish culture festivals and to presenters of Jewish music, language, dance and art.”
The libretto has been published in Italian and in English, and selections of it have been published in Bengali, Arabic, Yiddish and German. It is “being taught in universities worldwide in departments of global literature, Jewish studies and humanities and media studies,” she said.
The artists bringing Salomé: Woman of Valor to Vancouver are all “at the forefront of their respective fields,” said Karasick, “and so I feel so fortunate to be working with such powerful creators, all revolutionaries in their own ways. Frank works with Shai Bachar and Deep Singh on a number of musical projects – Deep and Frank started the internationally acclaimed bhangra-klezmer fusion band Sharabi; and [Frank] co-developed Night in the Old Marketplace with Alex Aron, so bringing her on board as a director seemed a natural fit.
“Over the five years of envisioning the piece, we tried on a number of dance styles, ranging from tribal belly dance to sword dance/swallowers, and, with the advice of (Merce Cunningham protégé) Gus Solomons, Jr., settled on the avant garde modern dance of Israeli superstar Jesse Zarrit and the stunningly poetic Rebecca Margolick, with a shout-out to the Dadaist Loïe Fuller stylings by Jodi Sperling.”
Mak’s video on Bryant’s silent film, notes the project’s promotional material, is “punctuated with Jim Andrews’ stunning vispo [visual poetry], with special video appearances by … Tony Torn as Herod, lit by Nicole Lang.”
“Together,” said Karasick, “we’re expanding our work in ways only dreamed possible; have created an intellectually provocative, audio-visual sensorium, informed by our (Frank’s and my) ongoing obsession with excess, desire and pushing boundaries.”
And it’s an interest, if not obsession, with many others, as well. The Kickstarter campaign for Salomé surpassed its goal of $20,000, about half of the project’s budget.
“The show has been garnering a lot of love and support from colleagues and patrons,” said Karasick, “perhaps due to ways that it addresses the social and political necessity to speak the unspoken, resist stereotypes, misrepresentation and outdated myths, and fosters a thinking that leads to a hybridized syncretic culture, one that honours the intermixing of blood, belief, rhythm, texture and being. Content-wise, it addresses outdated notions of identity and ethnicity, and carves out a space where difference and otherness can be celebrated. We feel incredibly grateful, and hope that we can keep growing it. Broadway, here we come!”
But, first, the Chutzpah! Festival. They have also been invited to Toronto’s Ashkenaz Festival and the Boston Jewish Music Festival, said Karasick, who will continue to tour with the Salomé books. “Frank,” she said, “will record and release the music as a CD. We hope to see it at major festivals and venues worldwide.”
The presentations of Salomé at Chutzpah! are presented in association with the Dance Centre, where the performances will take place. For tickets and the full festival lineup, visit chutzpahfestival.com.
On Sept. 25, a group of writers gathered to write and share poems sparked by the paintings of Waldemar Smolarek, now on display at Zack Gallery. (photo by Olga Livshin)
Poetry events at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery have become a regular feature in the last few years. Every couple of months, writers of Pandora’s Collective meet at the gallery to read their poems inspired by the art. They held their latest gathering on Sept. 25.
The abstract paintings currently on display at the Zack seem to have been created to inspire poetry. Waldemar Smolarek’s work is known to gallery patrons. Smolarek’s first show at the Zack, in 2012, was posthumous – he died in 2010 – but his art is alive, infused with vibrant colours and the artist’s unique frenetic energy.
Smolarek, a proponent of purely abstract compositions, filled his canvasses with dynamic currents. His lines, in every imaginable hue, fly like arrows. His multicoloured balls dance like polka dots. His vivid splashes of blue and peach flow into each other, seemingly at random, but there is logic in the twists and turns of the artist’s brush. His art invites people to delve into their own psyche, and the poets of the evening responded to the paintings’ visual challenge with a wide variety of works: long and short, light-hearted and lamenting. Some poems were inspired by one specific painting, while other rhyming flights of fancy encompassed the entire gallery.
As the event was a collaboration between the Zack Gallery and the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library, Helen Pinsky, the head librarian, gave a short introduction before passing the microphone to Leanne Boschman, the host of the evening.
Although it was her first time as host, Boschman has participated in the Zack Gallery poetry evenings twice before. “The first time, the exhibition included the artist’s journal and sketches, and I found it fascinating to see the artistic journey in progress,” she told the Independent. “The second time, it was a show of abstract photographs…. I like abstract art in connection to my poetry. I can play loosely with colours and shapes and words. It’s harder when the art shows specific people or places. With abstract art, the poet is free to follow her own associations. Sometimes, it’s a story; sometimes, a feeling or a question.”
Most of the participating poets agreed with her assessment, and Smolarek’s art was a rich source for many pieces. The audience, although not large, was extremely generous in support of anyone at the mic, both the listed readers and the brave volunteers who took part in the open mic portion of the event. The friendly atmosphere, combined with the bright paintings and Boschman’s humorous but factual introductions of every reader, made the evening a joyful celebration of colours and words.
The first poet who read, Suzy Malcolm, has been writing poetry since she was a teenager. “It’s my fifth time at the Zack,” she said. “I prefer abstract art for my poetry. It feels like a gift to write about colours and shapes.” She writes poetry for children as well as adults, and her poems at this event reflected both sides of her poetic endeavours.
Eva Waldauf, the next reader, started writing poetry when she was around 40. “I’m a visual artist,” she said. “Once, I had to write a poem for a class, and I liked it. I thought it was fun; thought, ‘I could do it,’ so I began writing poetry.” Her poems were not written on the spot. “I visited the gallery last week to see the paintings, so I would have time to write and edit my poems. I like to come prepared.” Although she admitted to always being nervous before reading her poems, one wouldn’t have guessed it from her performance. Her reading, relaxed and expressive, enhanced by expansive gestures, revealed a good actress as well as an original poet.
The next presenter, David Geary, staged his poems as letters to Smolarek. His presentation was comical. As if playing a game, he strode around the gallery and enrolled everyone in the audience and all the paintings as his willing and laughing playmates.
As a counterpoint to his irreverent show, Sita Carboni’s poetry resonated with mournful tunes. One of the co-founders of Pandora’s Collective, Carboni noted that, with art like Smolarek’s, a poet is free to explore in any direction. Her poetry, contemplative and deep, included a goodbye to someone she lost recently, and she couldn’t finish her reading because of the tears that choked her.
Warren Dean Fulton also prefers abstract art for his poetry. “Abstract art allows you to project your own feeling and emotions. It is speaking to your subconscious. The poet is much less free with portraits or landscape.”
Fulton has participated in the poetry readings at the Zack before. “It is interesting to hear how the same paintings could inspire such different interpretations,” he mused. As he likes to improvise with his poetry, he hadn’t seen Smolarek’s work before that evening.
The last poet of the night, Amanda Wardrop, is also an experienced writer and reader. A schoolteacher, Wardrop said she finds poetry everywhere: in her interactions with students, in figurative art and in abstract art. “Different poetry, that’s all,” she said. “Figurative art often results in a narrative, while abstract art pushes one to a more emotional response.” She did her research before coming to the reading that night, and her poetry touched on the artist’s technique: layers and textures, as they related to our lives.
The night concluded with a lively musical performance by Kempton Dexter, who played his guitar, sang and joked to the delight of the audience.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
***
Balls collide and come apart,
Lines zigzag and soar,
Feeding moxie to my heart
Fields awash with colour.
Reds and blues and greens explode
Shards and doodles frolic,
Polka dots in quirky mode,
Joyful and symbolic.
– Olga Livshin, inspired by the artwork of Waldemar Smolarek
Carol Weinstock only started delving into poetry a few years ago, around the time she joined a writing group. “I was a journalist before I retired,” she told the Independent. The group has motivated her try other forms of writing.
“The core is about five or six people,” Weinstock explained. “They come to almost every meeting. Others come and go. There are men and women, mostly retired. They write in different genres. Some write poetry, like me. Others write memoirs or short stories. One is writing a novel. One woman is a professional artist, but she wants to expand her creative output, to add writing to her range of expressions.”
Diane Darch, another member, recalled how it all started. “Sometime in 2012, people in the programming committee of False Creek Community Centre discussed the need for more programs for seniors, the 55+ group. Several possible programs were considered, including bowling and mahjong, but they finally settled on a writing group, a self-directed program. It officially began in January 2014 with a handful of enthusiastic people, each with an interest in writing for fun, for growth and for sharing a part of themselves.”
Darch has been with the group from the beginning. “I personally joined because I was interested in writing,” she said. “I learned from others’ types of writing and from critiques. It did put some pressure to write either at home or during the sessions. Sometimes, we arranged our own sessions, when the community centre was not available. Friendships were formed because we shared our personal writings. It is a fun group, non-threatening, and gives lots of encouragement to all levels. The group validated my writing.”
A year ago, she moved to Victoria. “I saw the group grow to a healthy dozen, change because of various commitments, then sadly go back to too few,” said Darch. “I’m no longer a regular member and I miss it. I do drop in when I’m back in Vancouver.”
Weinstock is one of the group’s first members, joining in its first year, and she’s been a steady participant since. “Our meetings usually have a structure. It’s flexible, not rigid, but it forces us all to write. First, we talk, share what’s happening in our lives, the books we read. Then someone brings a prompt, and we write for about an hour. Then anyone who wants can share their writing, and we all discuss it. It’s a very supportive environment.”
Weinstock attributes her writing of poetry to the group’s influence. “Poetry is a new form for me,” she said. “Before I retired, I worked as a freelance journalist for various California papers. I also taught journalism at a community college. I never wrote poetry or fiction. After I retired, I returned home to Canada. Then I joined this writing group and I wanted to try something different. And the group helps. It provides me with a scheduled time and place to write and the prompts. I might not have written so much if not for the group. I’m not sure.”
She doesn’t only write to the group prompts. “Sometimes, I would read a news article and a political or social problem would catch my attention. I would write a poem,” said Weinstock, whose journalistic inclinations frequently push her towards controversial or humanitarian issues, concerning some obscure corners of the world. She recalled one such occasion: “I read this story about the plight of the shrimp farms in Asia, and it touched me deeply. I wrote a poem. Other times, I would write something more personal but, in general, I don’t like writing about my personal stuff.”
Poetry is a way for Weinstock to express herself, her thoughts, emotions and ideas in a concise and organized way. A few months ago, the writing group came up with the prompt to write about what Canada means to each of the members, in celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday.
“I started with something different, but it didn’t work,” said Weinstock of the poem she wrote for the occasion. “Then I decided to go with concrete things: what we eat, what we wear, where we live, and the poem unfolded…. I showed it to my friends, and they liked it. One of my friends, Debby Altow, is active in the Jewish community in Vancouver. She regularly reads the Jewish Independent, and she asked if I would mind sending my poem to the paper. I read the paper sometimes, too. Of course, I said yes.”
Each group member participated in the exercise. Some wrote poetry. Others wrote essays. Now, all those pieces of Canada-inspired writing are on display at False Creek Community Centre. Everyone coming into the centre passes by them as they walk down the hallway leading to the reception desk. Some people even stop and read a few.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
We are Canadian
Beret, turban, skullcap,
Babushka, hijab, headband.
No matter what hat we wear,
We are Canadian.
Fry bread, falafel, poutine,
Pizza, curry, Kraft dinner.
No matter what food we eat,
We are Canadian.
France, Britain, India,
Ukraine, China, Jamaica.
No matter where we come from
We are Canadian.
Ucluelet, Cape Breton, Moose Jaw,
Attawapiskat, Yellowknife, Flin Flon.
No matter where we live,
We are Canadian.
Teacher, nurse, farmer,
Reporter, welder, programmer.
No matter what work we do,
We are Canadian.
Blending, fusing,
Reconciling, adapting.
We work, sweat, dream together
To create one Canada.
Rachel Seelig, author of Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jewish Literature Between East and West, 1919-1933. (photo by Lauren Kurc)
Rachel Seelig’s Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jewish Literature Between East and West, 1919-1933 (University of Michigan Press, 2016) encompasses so many ideas – some very nuanced, others technical – that a reader will enjoy it on their own, but will learn much more if they can discuss and analyze it with others.
Strangers in Berlin uses the example of four poets – Ludwig Strauss, Moyshe Kulbak, Uri Zvi Greenberg and Gertrud Kolmar – to examine the influence that Berlin during the Weimar Republic had on Jewish literature.
“The relationship between German Jews and East European Jews in Germany typically has been depicted in terms of … German Jews figuring as reluctant hosts, cultural insiders who viewed the so-called Ostjuden as outsiders or even infiltrators,” writes Seelig. “Strangers in Berlin is aimed at destabilizing these designations by presenting Berlin as a border traversable in both directions…. Foreigners arriving from abroad availed themselves of artistic inspiration and anonymity in order to cultivate new forms of culture, while those native to Germany ascertained their increasing estrangement from the fatherland, which they similarly channeled into artistic production. Whether they were coming or going, exiled in Germany or soon-to-be-exiled from Germany, these writers experienced Berlin as a transitional site between a moribund pre-World War I political order and an increasingly divided, nationalistic European reality.”
Seelig told the Independent that she “chose to focus on four poets who are not necessarily remembered as key figures in Weimar culture but who had considerable influence in their own day.”
She explained, “One of the reasons that these poets are relatively neglected is that they are not easily categorized according to national literary boundaries. Two of them, Strauss and Greenberg, immigrated from Europe to Palestine and wrote in more than one language (Strauss in German and Hebrew and Greenberg in Yiddish and Hebrew) and the other two, Kulbak and Kolmar, produced highly diverse, avant-garde bodies of work that do not align with what we tend to see as the dominant literary trends of their day. So, these writers weren’t just ‘strangers in Berlin’ – that is, writers who are located on the margins of the cultural milieu in which they had either permanently or provisionally settled – but also strangers to us as readers in the 21st century.
“I suppose I made it my mission to bring their extraordinary writing to light, and the best way to do so was to group them together within this context of intense transition and transformation,” she said. “For all four, the experience of living in Weimar Berlin – even if only briefly – left a profound imprint on their work and on their national identity. For all four, Berlin was a place in which they were forced to renegotiate identity. Taken together, I think their works provide a fascinating glimpse into the multiplicity of images of Jewish homeland that emerged during this very fruitful yet volatile period in history.”
Weimar Berlin brought together German, Hebrew and Yiddish literature and Strangers in Berlin examines “the impact of migration – of individuals, languages and cultural concepts – on Jewish national consciousness between the world wars,” writes Seelig. She chose to focus on poets, in part, “because establishing an autonomous and multifaceted poetic tradition was a crucial component of modern national movements.”
Whereas both the Westjuden and Ostjuden “initially viewed Germany as the wellspring of liberal, Western values, by World War I, they had begun to ‘re-orient’ their gaze toward the ‘East,’ extending temporally and geographically from the ancient Near East to contemporary Eastern Europe,” writes Seelig. “Plagued by the uncertainty of national homelessness and the terror of rising antisemitism, both groups looked eastward with a combination of nostalgia, hope and despair in a effort to come to terms with the failure of the West to fulfil the promise of coexistence predicated on the liberal principles of Enlightment. Indeed, melancholic longing for the ‘East’ betrayed profound dislocation in the ‘West,’ which in turn fueled the search for a new national homeland, whether real or imagined.”
Vancouver-born and -raised, Seelig received her undergraduate degree in comparative literature at Stanford University, then worked for a time in New York. She earned her master’s and PhD in Jewish studies at the University of Chicago, spending her last couple years of graduate school in Tel Aviv. She received the Ray D. Wolfe Postdoctoral Fellowship in Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto and then, after that, returned to Israel, where she was a Mandel Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Currently, she is a fellow at the University of Michigan’s Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies. She speaks English, Hebrew, German and Yiddish. From even this brief bio, it is no wonder that Seelig is interested in borders and thresholds.
“We live in a world today that is both utterly divided and, in a sense, borderless,” she told the Independent. “The phenomena of globalization and mass migration have made us keenly aware of the ways in which borders are, on the one hand, more easily traversed, and, on the other hand, rigourously enforced and policed. Borders have always been sites of contestation and conflict, but a border can also be seen as a threshold that one crosses from one reality to another and a productive site of transfer and transformation.
“I myself migrated across several borders as this book came into being. It started to develop as a doctoral dissertation in Chicago, which I finished writing in Tel Aviv. It became a book – one that changed shape continuously – in Toronto, Berlin and Jerusalem, and was ultimately published in Ann Arbor, Mich. My own nomadic experience as an academic (and I realize, of course, that mine is a kind of privileged nomadism) made me particularly attentive to the impact of changing surroundings and of transitions on one’s thinking, work and identity.”
While accessible, Strangers in Berlin’s dissertation origins are evident, and there are some sentences people will have to read more than once for understanding.
“Strangers in Berlin is first and foremost an academic book, which grew out of my doctoral dissertation, acknowledged Seelig. “But, in the process of transforming the dissertation into a book – and I should point out that the book departs fairly dramatically in terms of content and argument from the dissertation – I made a concerted effort to make the text engaging and highly readable by simplifying the language and peppering every chapter with interesting anecdotes. It will be used by researchers and teachers within the academic context, but I also very much hope that it will be read by lay readers who are interested in modern Jewish culture and the history of the Weimar Republic, which is such a vibrant and captivating time period. I also think that the themes of homeland and migration, which are at the centre of the book, are extraordinarily relevant today, and I hope that readers will find this glimpse into Weimar culture and history resonates with our own political reality today.”
Certain parts of Strangers in Berlin will make readers shiver with a sense of déjà vu. In the chapter on Kolmar, for instance, Seelig writes that, in the poet’s one novel, Die jüdische Mutter (The Jewish Mother), “Kolmar offers a pained reflection on the impossibility of salvaging a viable German-Jewish female identity in an era when both Jewishness and femininity were under siege.” Seelig notes, “Conservatives seeking to safeguard their middle-class privileges and to rebuild a healthy Germany Volkskörper (national body) regarded independent women and integrated Jews as similarly ‘decadent’ social elements…. The result of this campaign was a new form of male repression, which was often shrouded in xenophobic sentiments.”
Readers will see similarities between the Weimar period and what is currently happening in some European countries and in the United States. As it happens, Strangers in Berlin’s launch took place the day after the U.S. presidential election.
“A few hours before the event,” she said, “I was reading an article by Chemi Shalev in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in which he commented that many millions of Muslims, Mexicans and Jews now feel like ‘strangers in the country they call home.’ Obviously, his statement resonated very strongly with me and with my book.
“The book deals with a historical moment, nearly a century ago, when Berlin emerged as a major metropolis that attracted large swaths of immigrants, who were often seen as unwelcome infiltrators. In this respect, 1920s Berlin isn’t such a far cry from Berlin or Toronto or New York City of today. The book really does resonate with what’s going on in the U.S. and in so much of the world.… We are witnessing the rise of nativist sentiments and attendant xenophobia and bigotry that are oh so reminiscent of interwar Europe. And we’re seeing the way in which various forms of bigotry (anti-immigration, antisemitism and misogyny, all addressed in the book) have a tendency to intersect and even merge when these nativist sentiments are bolstered by political power. I realize it’s a cliché, but it really is remarkable to see how history repeats itself. It’s such a shame that the humanities, specifically history and literature, are under attack today (Trump just eliminated funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities from his proposed budget) at a time when we so desperately need them.”
Strangers in Berlin’s four poets struggle, as we all do, with the impossibility of being one thing – a German (or any other nationality), a Jew (or any other religion), for example. Not to mention the different conceptions of what comprises a “real” German (Canadian, American, etc.) or an “authentic” Jew (within the ranges of observance, belief). From all the research Seelig has done – her work, travel, ability to speak multiple languages and negotiate various cultures – has she any theories as to why humans have such trouble, in general, with multiplicity, ambiguity, a lack of borders?
“I wish I knew why we as humans have such a hard time with ambiguity,” she said. “This is something that affects our lives not only in terms of cultural, national or political identity but also in terms of relationships, career paths, place of residence, etc. On the one hand, we have more freedom than ever before to dwell ‘between’ identities, or to inhabit more than one identity, and yet that’s somehow deeply unsettling to us as creatures that crave order, certainty and security.
“I think there’s so much to be learned by the figures in my book, who didn’t have the luxury to choose where they would live or which system of beliefs to subscribe to (at least not without the risk of persecution), and who were profoundly shaped by the contingencies and vicissitudes of life. Each of the four main writers in the book represents more than one identity and, for each one, this was certainly a source of anxiety but also a source of profound inspiration and enrichment.”
Adeena Karasick has donated her archive to the Collection of Contemporary Literature at Simon Fraser University’s Bennett Library. (photo from Adeena Karasick)
Critically acclaimed poet and Vancouver native Adeena Karasick was in her hometown last month to celebrate the donation of her archive to Simon Fraser University.
The Collection of Contemporary Literature at SFU’s Bennett Library contains one of the biggest selections of avant-garde poetry in North America. “The collection has been building since 1965,” said Tony Power, the librarian-curator who oversaw the addition of Karasick’s works. “The collection features many of the poets whose tradition Karasick is associated with, such as Michael McClure and Robin Blaser. Karasick was influenced by her teacher, Warren Tallman, who also influenced, for example, Fred Wah, George Bowering and Daphne Marlatt. These are all poets who are featured in the Bennett Library collection.
“Karasick has a very high profile for a poet,” Powers added, “and a certain amount of notoriety for her more daring works.”
Karasick told the Jewish Independent that the Feb. 23 event, in which her personal notebooks became, in effect, public artifacts, was “surreal.”
“I was honoured to be included in this collection, one of the greatest collections in North America of contemporary poets and avant-garde renegades, provocateurs and risk-taking challengers of esthetics,” she said.
Karasick, whose work has been called “beautiful linguistic carnage” by Word Magazine, specializes in non-narrative, intimate works that are most concerned with the play of language itself.
“I am interested in using language to create different effects of meaning production, highlighting language as a physical, material, construct. Play, jouissance [delight], as Jew-essence,” she explained with a smile.
Karasick regularly plays with Jewish themes in her work, whether it’s the invocation of the Kotel (a wall made of words in more ways than one) at the heart of Dyssemia Sleaze, or the Hebrew letter mem, which inspires Mêmewars.
“In the kabbalah, the world is created through language,” she said. “That’s also the way I view things.”
Among Adeena Karasick’s donations to the Collection of Contemporary Literature at SFU’s Bennett Library were books and personal notes. (photo from Adeena Karasick)
Karasick’s speech is peppered with words like “intervention,” “transgression,” “disruption,” “nomadicism” and “vagrancy.” She aims, she explained, to “destabilize and subvert linguistic power structures with the hope of instigating new ways of seeing. My poetry uses playfulness and celebrates a sense of creative homelessness, a mashing up of poetry, critical theory and visuality.”
Asked how she felt about being a postmodern artist whose work has been called “an impressive deconstruction of language and meaning” by Canadian Literature, in an age where the American president, it could be said, was much maligned for engaging in similar activity, she pointed to Jewish postmodern philosopher Emanuel Levinas (1906-1995).
“I’m not saying there’s no truth. There is truth. There is what happened,” she said. “The search for the truth cannot be solitary or uniperspectival though, and cannot be an imposition of ‘the truth’ on others in a totalitarian way. Levinas said that truth itself arises out of discourse … it rests in the ethical relation between people, where a search for the truth can take place. Truth requires humility and multiplicity.”
Born in Winnipeg, Karasick’s family moved to Vancouver when she was six months old, and she grew up here. She had her bat mitzvah at Congregation Beth Israel and was very much a part of the local Jewish community. She went to the University of British Columbia for her undergraduate degree, did her master’s at York in Toronto and her doctorate at Concordia, in Montreal, in “French feminist post-structural theory and kabbalistic hermeneutics.”
Karasick now teaches at Pratt Institute in New York and is enjoying a growing distinction as one of the premier avant-garde poets of her generation. She is becoming known for her innovative use of video as well as the printed page.
In 2018, Karasick will release a new book, Alephville, a poem composed of faux Facebook updates. “I was un-nerved by the timing,” she said, referencing the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, “by the fact that it is basically a poem composed of ‘alternative facts.’”
Also next year, Karasick will debut her “spoken-word opera” Salomé: Woman of Valour, a feminist reinterpretation of the biblical character. She co-wrote the piece with Grammy Award-winning musician Frank London of the Klezmatics. They met through KlezKanada, an annual klezmer camp that has been meeting in the Laurentians for 20 years, the poetry division of which Karasick has been director for the last six years.
Karasick wrote the libretto for Salomé: Woman of Valour and London composed the music, an original score that blends Arabic, klezmer, jazz and bhangra. The nomadic and subversive piece will première at next year’s Chutzpah! Festival.
Matthew Gindinis a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.
Certain parts of Strangers in Berlin will make readers shiver with a sense of déjà vu. In the chapter on Kolmar, for instance, Seelig writes that, in the poet’s one novel, Die jüdische Mutter (The Jewish Mother), “Kolmar offers a pained reflection on the impossibility of salvaging a viable German-Jewish female identity in an era when both Jewishness and femininity were under siege.” Seelig notes, “Conservatives seeking to safeguard their middle-class privileges and to rebuild a healthy Germany Volkskörper (national body) regarded independent women and integrated Jews as similarly ‘decadent’ social elements…. The result of this campaign was a new form of male repression, which was often shrouded in xenophobic sentiments.”
