Description
- Pages: 57
- Language: English
- ISBN: 978-1-933675-56-5
Praise
“In the Diaspora, the Book replaces and compensates for the the Land that is lost. But in Bea Opengart’s In the Land, the Land and the Book are one. Opengart’s accounting weaves personal reflection with precise reportage, the awareness of tradition with an openness to the changes, the upheavals, of contemporary Israeli life.
Neither tourist nor native, she is, rather, the lost lover strangely returned, the stranger forever falling in love. Give yourself to her Book as she gives herself to the Land.” – Norman Finkelstein
Excerpt
They Seek Her Who Has Never Departed
Hands in her lap, feet
in the rubble, she watches
young men dancing,
old men stammering
love. She doesn’t
turn from them, matching
passion with strength
draped in stones
from the shoulder,
stones at the hem of her dress.
About the Author
Bea Opengart’s poems have appeared in a number of journals including The American Voice, Carolina Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Shendandoah, Southern Humanities Review, Ploughshares, The Louisville Review, The Marsh Hawk Review, and others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, and she has received grants from The Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Kentucky Arts Council, and The Ohio Arts Council. Her most recent books are a chapbook, This Day, published by Finishing Line Press in the spring of 2011, and In the Land, a full length collection, published by Dos Madres Press, also in spring 2011. Her first book, Erotica, was published by Owl Creek Press in 1995. Bea teaches English Composition and Poetry Writing at the University of Cincinnati.