Bøger af Barbara Pelman

Born out of the early days of the pandemic, Barbara Pelman's A Brief and Endless Sea explores the concept of ' gaps' those moments of nothingness that are paradoxically full of potential. Many of the poems are rooted in Jewish tradition: the Angel Purah who cuts the ties between soul and body; the prophet Isaiah's words of comfort; the concept of " Tsimtsum," a withdrawal in order to create space for something new. The poems reach toward a potential built from seeming emptiness; Pelman mines the depths, taking us to difficult places-- the dissolution of a marriage, caring for a parent with dementia. But she doesn't leave us there, waiting. Using the power of words to map a route out, A Brief and Endless Sea pulls us toward life in all of its vibrant details-- the simple beauty of a small garden, the pleasures of teaching, long walks with a grandson, and encounters with spirituality. For Pelman, there is comfort in the " smallest life you can love." Like the glosa form she turns to often, something small transforms into something larger, expansive. In A Brief and Endless Sea, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and waiting in itself presents fertile ground for hope and possibility.

These poems, spare and nuanced, explore the borrowed rooms we inhabit in personal relationships: the temporary homes of marriage and parenting; the personas we carry for a little while and must ultimately abandon. In tight and unsentimental poems, Barbara Pelman grieves the death of a father, notes the changing dynamics of mothers and daughters, watches the doors irrevocably close on a marriage, and delights in the temporal beauty surrounding her. Pelman deftly uses a range of forms: sonnets, sestinas, ghazals and glosas. The poems, with surprising intensity and tactile clarity, show the poet''s perspective of the familiar changing, and ultimately finding a sense of home.