Last week I presented a project that seemed unlikely to exist and equally unlikely to succeed, but it managed to do both. It was a live poetry performance called Mirrors. In spite of the simple title, every time I tried to explain to the people I\u2019d enlisted to read, we all got tangled up. Three groups of four pairs, with ten-minute breaks for discussion \u2014 too much information! Just dive in!
Which we did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I chose bits of writing from observant feminist\/literary scholar of Torah, Avivah Zornberg, whose verbal pyrotechnics and all-around genre-bending work I\u2019ve long admired.\u00a0 I placed these powerful excerpts of midrash opposite a selection of my poems.\u00a0 Zornberg\u2019s dense text, out of context, next to my dense text \u2026 a case of heightening complexity to obtain clarity?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The idea was to put them side by side and let the sparks fly. They\u2019re not one-to-one correspondences, more like juxtapositions, points of departure, spiky soul mates. Zornberg\u2019s probing of the unconscious of a Torah passage, her eliciting of emotion inside discontinuities gaps and white spaces left room for my poetic eruptions about existential condition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Did they tango? Well, yes. Rumblings, premonitions, regret, amazement, praise – voices were liberated in the room, a choral celebration of the many. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a big personal experiment. I brought all my energy, then right afterwards collapsed into a miserable cold. I\u2019ve been out most of the week. The work was ready but it took a lot of energy to be ready. I spent the week recovering from my readiness. I am renewed, ready to be ready again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thanks to Alan Flam, Louis Gitlin and the Soulful Shabbat contingent!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week I presented a project that seemed unlikely to exist and equally unlikely to succeed, but it managed to do both. It was a live poetry performance called Mirrors. In spite of the simple title, every time I tried … Continue reading