Uvi Poznansky's Blog, page 212

I coil up, all around you

At first I snarl, snaking In the dirt around your foot, I wish to shoot up, lifting My body from the soot 
I coil up, all around you  Weaving shadows into your light Your white, now brushed with my blue  Is no longer pure--not quite--  
And as I reach, your neck to clutch    And lean in with a hiss  Your head floats off, now out of touch  So far out of my kiss  
How can I reach your temple?  I can't, now I know  You are so high, so gentle  You tremble in the flow... 

Here I imagine myself as a transparent snake rising up, one scale after another, one facet after another, around the paper sculpture I created some time ago. The sculpture is made of four parts: 

The foot at the bottom, which I shaped as an elegant, curvy pedestal The faceted design in the middle, which I created out of a single sheet of paper, with no cutting or glueing at all (merely by light scoring and hand pressure)The faceted 'neck', which I brought to a single point; And the crown on top, which I set afloat above that point.  Curious about my paper sculptures? Take a look at my Plucked Porcupine or my Paper Peacock

The voice is the voice of Jacob

Without even looking at the entrance to the tent, without even touching the cold surface of the hourglass, I know: It is nearly empty. The sand is running out. For us, there is no more time. He will never realize who it was standing there by his bedside, overcome and awash with tears.I let one word escape, hoping that he cannot catch the sound of it—but wishing, in spite of myself, that he would: “Dad,” I whisper.It is then that he raises his hand and with a strength I did not know he possessed, takes hold of my limb. He runs his fingers through the hair of the goatskin sleeve, comes as high up as my heart—and then, loses his breath and lets go. “The arm is the arm of Esav,” he whispers. “But the voice is the voice of Yankle.”
Yankle in A Favorite Son
This is a seminal moment in the story: Isaac, the blind father is on his deathbed. He seems to suspect he is being fooled. Meanwhile Yankle, the son, is torn between his love for his father and an irresistible urge to deceive him, in order to get that which does not rightly belong to him: the last blessing. He stands before his father, arm covered with a goatskin sleeve (so it may feel like his hairy brother's arm) not knowing where to go from here. Will he or won't he? This is how my narrator, David Kudler, reads this passage, expressing the heart-rending conflict in Yankle's voice:

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"On a moral and ethical level the novel had a powerful impact on me." 
-Christoph Fischer, Top 500 Reviewer
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A Favorite Son★ Audiobook ★ Ebook ★ Print ★

King David: Antithetical Identities

Susan J Mardinly is a singer, poet, and the author of Deep Calls to Deep. I am thrilled that she posted this review for Rise to Power:

5.0 out of 5 stars King David: Antithetical Identities, March 23, 2014By Astarte "Susan J Mardinly" - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Rise to Power (The David Chronicles) (Kindle Edition) In Uvi Poznansky’s visionary imagination, words become brushstrokes to paint and sculpt David in his antithetical identities of poet/musician and warrior. This is a rare expose of this complex man’s personality and character: the juxtaposition of giant killer, cave refugee and crowned monarch. Despite understanding that people follow him because his image is larger than life, David lives with a persistent fear of losing control, as happened to Saul. He compartmentalizes the poet/musician so he can become a hardened killer and perfected ruler. As taut as a bow string and poetic as the string of the harp, Poznansky grips the contradictions of David’s vision of power in opposition to a future impotency. Impelled by these paradigms are behaviors of denial and prayers of abandoned faith. Believing God is his protector, he is yet constantly besieged by enemies. Women are among the enemies, as he allows himself to be seduced for others’ agendas. Judaic law informs his intelligence and actions, as in his mercy to Saul, but Poznansky depicts them as desires for his own salvation. Surrounding and emanating throughout all is the creative aura of David’s music and words, inspired in their uniqueness according to life events as a time traveler spanning past and future, even into our own era.

We charge ahead with our stories of yore

We charge ahead with our stories of yoreUnder clouds of smoke, through flames, burning emberHere we come, breathing life into a moment of loreFollow us on the way to a time to remember
Swords slash the air! Let us all Rise to PowerFly the Flight of the Earls... Hear the flutter, the whiz?Now this is the place, and this is the hourTo take in the view of The Way the World is
Watch as our words Set the Night on FireThe plot will soon thicken, the drama is rife...A Luminous Future awaits! Let us reach higherAnd raise our voices, to adventure, To Life!
From River Oaks Plantation to Moscow DreamsCome and discover the Rose of GweneddOur stories unfold with whispers and screamsAs we cross The Bridge of Deaths, for good or for bad
Learn all that happened Regarding RuthCome into our midst, your place is here, in the centerI, The Sun, will shine with the glory of truth
Follow us on the way to a time to remember


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An Excellent Adventure!

Dan Glover is the author of Gathering of Lovers series as well as the Mermaid series. He also has several collections of short stories and anthologies that revolve around Zen Buddhism and Eastern teachings as seen through the eyes of Western culture. I am deeply honored to find this short and sweet review for A Favorite Son: 

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Adventure!, March 23, 2014By Dan Glover - See all my reviewsAmazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: A Favorite Son (Kindle Edition) A Favorite Son sets brother against brother in an age-old quest for power. With each of them vying for their parents' love and respect, the winner comes to discover his victory is hollow... that sometimes it is better to lose the battle and thereby perhaps win the war. A well-written story that will hold your attention to the end. Highly recommended!

Lying still in a corner of the cave, I try my best not to rattle

"Lying still in a corner of the cave, I try my best not to rattle, not to betray my fear. I figure, as long as they think me unconscious, I am safe. I have jolted awake because of the voices, only to discover they are incoherent and muffled. In between the gusts of wind, I can hear them hissing. Each phrase plays out in some verbose foreign music, which I cannot decipher for the life of me. Sigh. This is not Aramaic for sure, or any of the other languages spoken by the locals in my village or by the merchants traveling through along the Jordan river.  At this moment I find myself overwhelmed, turned inside out by a sense of suspicion. Something has been taken away from me. My breath? My name? Identity? Who am I, then?"
Job's wife in Twisted
I am truly enamored with paper. I love folding it, rolling it, cutting it, spilling ink and paint on it, and studying the reflections it gives off. At times it stares back at me, especially when I can find no words to write on its pure, white surface. Here is my oil painting of a rolling paper band, set against a background of a cave with stalagmites. It was inspired by my quick charcoal sketch of a nude. 
You will notice that this is no simple transformation, as the paper band goes deep into the internals of the body, which is no longer solid. Also, I staged the figure in an environment where light drizzles from above in glowing colors, and shadows of the paper band are cast all the way down, nearly reaching you.


Dark, intense, entertaining, thought-provoking and emotional, these short stories each hold their own brand of magnetisim that lasts long after the last word is read... A wealth of depth in few words.  -Dii, Top 1000 Reviewer Twisted★ Audio ★ Ebook ★ Print ★
Amazon must be out of their mind... 
The  Print  edition is on sale below cost @ $2.38!
Hint hint... Get it now

We chart a course, the whole world we would wrap

Crossing the ocean, traveling through land
We chart a course, the whole world we would wrap
With stories from the deep south, from England to Ireland
From Romania to Russia, all across the map
From Israel to a faraway extinct Hittite kingdom
Kings, bards, and beggars, slavery and freedom  

Don't miss this opportunity! 
Come travel with us to faraway places, distant times
Click this link and join: A Time to Remember

Such is the way to create history, when none is available

History is written by the winners. They make sure to remove that version of history that belongs to the losers. David, the young entertainer coming to play his lyre in king Saul’s court, makes this point in Rise to Power:

Hung on the wall is an shiny iron shield. I brush my fingers over the sharp ridges of the engraved inscription, trying to figure it out by touch. It says, The House of Kish. To a naive observer it may seem like an emblem of a highly respected ancestry—but as everyone around the country knows, Saul has no royal blood in his veins. He is the son of Kish, a lowly farmer who owns but a few asses. In his youth Saul used to tend to these stubborn animals. He may long for those carefree days. Even so, word on the street is that he did a lousy job, because the asses got lost more often than not. Everyone hopes and prays that he will do better as a king.The worst part is, his family comes from a tribe of ill-repute. The tribe of Benjamin is known to be nothing but a rowdy mob, notorious for an insatiable appetite for rape and murder, for which it was severely punished. In a fierce civil war, it was nearly wiped out—not so long ago—by the other tribes. For the life of me I cannot figure why the first king of Israel should be picked from the poor, the downtrodden. It is a questionable political decision—but perhaps it is better this way. In the back of his mind Saul should know his humble beginnings. He should feel compassion for his subjects, even though at this point all I sense out of him is rage and jealousy.
He is the son of a simple farmer, which makes this emblem quite pretentious. But who cares? By instinct I get it, I understand his need to display the thing, because this is the way to create history, when none is available. 
Even when the winner’s version of history makes it to the books, it is modified by later generations, adding layers upon layers of interpretation. So when I select old yarn to give it a new twist, I always focus on the human aspect: my biblically-inspired characters are no heroes. They are modern men and women, who at times find the courage to do heroic acts; at times they are besieged by emotions of grief, jealousy, or overwhelming passion; and always, they ponder who they are with the doubts and hesitations that are familiar to all of us. 

Here, for example, is what Yankle--the main character in my book A Favorite Son, inspired by the biblical figure of Jacob--says about who he is. 

I like to think of myself as a modern man. A confused one. One left to his own devices, because of one thing: the silence of God. When Isaac, my father, lay on his deathbed, waiting for me, or rather, for his favorite son to come in, he suspected, somehow, that he was about to be fooled. And yet, God kept silent. Now, all these years later, I wonder about it. God did not help the old man. He gave no warning to him, not one whisper in his ear, not a single clue. Now as then, He is utterly still, and will not alert me when my time comes, when they, my sons, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, are ready to face me, to fool their old man.

Three of my books are biblically inspired, check them out:Rise to Power★ Audio ★ Ebook ★ Print ★

A Favorite Son★ Audio★ Ebook ★ Print ★

Twisted★ Audio ★ Ebook ★ Print ★

Isaac, Rebecca, and Sons: A modernized, sometimes funny, psychological perspective

Just found this lovely, thoughtful review for A Favorite Son:

5.0 out of 5 stars Isaac, Rebecca, and Sons: A modernized, sometimes funny, psychological perspective, March 20, 2014By Judie Amsel (Mayfield Heights, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: A Favorite Son (Kindle Edition) Sometimes it is helpful to hear a familiar story from a different perspective in order to understand more of what the story says and doesn’t say. A FAVORITE SON does that with the biblical story of Jacob (Yanklel), his parents, Isaac and Rebecca, and his twin brother, Esau (Esav).
Uvi Poznansky tells the story from both a biblical and modern perspective emphasizing the psychological aspects. Basically it is the story of sibling rivalry and parental favoritism and highlights a rather dysfunctional foursome who still manage to occupy a positive place in religious history. Yankle questions how that came to be. Most of the story is identical to the biblical version but there are a few changes, some to relate to modern times.
The story, told from Yankle’s perspective, opens from him saying Esav pulled ahead of him to become the first born by a split second. That was very important because the first born child inherited everything from his father. But Yankle questions why his mother told him that (“Why would [a mother] pit one son against another?”) because of how that knowledge affected his life and made him feel “a burning desire to surpass my brother....I had to win it all–or be left with nothing.” He was her favorite, as Esav was his father’s. Poznansky does not mention the Biblical story which has God telling Rebecca before the twins were born that “the older would serve the younger.”
There are hints of Yankle’s future relationship with his own sons. Rebecca gives him the sleeve of her goatskin coat to deceive Isaac (in the original version he wears Esav’s clothes and has the animal skin on his arm) and Yankle pledges he will never show favoritism to any of his own children. (I saw Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat the night before I read this novella. So much for his remembering his vow.) Yankle offers Esav lentil stew, Esav asks if it’s kosher. The laws of kashrut, in fact the entire Bible, were still in the future. He decides the Yankle-in-the-Box restaurant chain was established in honor of his stew.
In the Bible, after sending Yankle away to escape his brother’s wrath, Rebecca is not mentioned again. A FAVORITE SON has him seeing her in the desert, telling him part of her story while her dress, her black veil, tells him his father had died.
Yankle considered his father to be wimp–his father sent a servant to find a wife for him, but, until he fled Esav’s fury, Yankle had never ventured away from home, either. (Isaac realized that they were very similar but that angle is not explored.) Yankle blames Isaac as well himself for his own weaknesses and notes the name his father gave him means “follower:” “How can a follower become a leader?”
As he plans to give parting advice to his sons before he dies, Isaac observed “I have come to the conclusion based on many, many years of experience, that I can expect with perfect certainty, that my advice will be utterly and immediately ignored.
While the discrepancies between A FAVORITE SON and the Bible are the writer’s prerogative, there was at least one contradiction: When Rebecca visits Isaac as he is dying, she asks “What will I do without you?” On the next page she tell him, “You have a long life ahead of you.”
Beautifully written, A FAVORITE SON tells the story behind the legend.
This book was a free Amazon download.

Let me introduce to to my author friends

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Yael Politis Blog Uvi Poznansky I paint with my pen, and write with my paintbrush@UviPoznanskyBlogArt Site

Barbara Robinson Southern reads, where the tea is sweet, and the chicken is fried@BJRobinson6Blog Julia Gousseva @JGousseva 
website Marsha Casper Cook @mba3308 
Website Teodor Flonta Learn From The Past@TeodorFlonta  Christian Ashley Author of Historical Romance, Paranormal Fiction, and Erotic Fantasy@ChristianAsh53Website Kim Scott Author of Twisted Maine Fiction
@kimscottauthorWebsite

Libby Fischer Hellmann Author of compulsively readable thrillers@libbyhellmann Website Mcv Egan I lived enough to have GREAT memories but not so much I have regrets....@M_C_V_EganThe bridge of DeathsDay in the SpotlightIs History the Agreed Upon Lie? Janet Morris Bestselling author of novels from historical to fantastical.
@uvmchristinePerseidSacred Band Michael K. Reynold Irish historical novelist@M_K_Reynolds 
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