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slight faith
"slight faith is what we need in these extraordinary
times and Risa Denenberg offers us this and more in her
personal how-to manual for survival: 'train for comedy
and calamity, ' she urges. From Babylon to New York
City, these luminous poems travel via polished lines and
prescient language. Yet, the voyage is never easy. The poet
keeps vigil alongside the dying and the dead but these
poems exist in service to the living. It's as if Denenberg
has split open her life and scraped out the interior fruit.
Judaism, Buddhism, yoga, and all night car rides--
the speaker scours each for answers. Across decades,
families, and the names of trees, we experience 'this
double helix called love.' This is a collection that I plan
to return to, to read again the music of 'sozzle, ' 'trundle, '
and 'roil;' to revel in the alchemy of 'everyday clouds that
amaze.' As a Jewish woman poet, I am especially excited
to welcome this book into the world."
--Susan Rich, author of Cloud Pharmacy
times and Risa Denenberg offers us this and more in her
personal how-to manual for survival: 'train for comedy
and calamity, ' she urges. From Babylon to New York
City, these luminous poems travel via polished lines and
prescient language. Yet, the voyage is never easy. The poet
keeps vigil alongside the dying and the dead but these
poems exist in service to the living. It's as if Denenberg
has split open her life and scraped out the interior fruit.
Judaism, Buddhism, yoga, and all night car rides--
the speaker scours each for answers. Across decades,
families, and the names of trees, we experience 'this
double helix called love.' This is a collection that I plan
to return to, to read again the music of 'sozzle, ' 'trundle, '
and 'roil;' to revel in the alchemy of 'everyday clouds that
amaze.' As a Jewish woman poet, I am especially excited
to welcome this book into the world."
--Susan Rich, author of Cloud Pharmacy
116 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 17, 2018
Risa Denenberg's book of poems, Slight Faith, is a masterpiece. Built in seven sections with brief quotes at the beginning of each, the quotes give us a handle as we read about death, loss & grief, a long gone son, an unknown grandchild, her mothers death, and the outcasts of this world we inhabit. Risa is a Nurse Practitioner, her authority comes through. She worked for many years in HIV/AIDS and is one of the long term providers who knows much about our history. Her personal hardships translate to human tragedy, the book is wide through her history as a Jewish lesbian elder who does Yoga and practices Buddhism. She speaks as a true outsider, an expat, a war hero who witnesses the fatalistic, and knows this world is not a safe place, but she continues to notice the beauty surrounding us sometimes with black humor and always with deep insight.
Section One: Faith is a fine invention. —Emily Dickinson
In the poem "Abiding Winter" she writes, "Then winter comes again and yet another,/a darkling season full of melancholy. The yanking/of my soul back to the gutter, that other//place where questions have no answers,/and answers only placate. It takes rafters/of steadfast faith, or mettle, to seek answers.//Truth is brutal. So much we can't recover,/" The poem ends brilliantly with the lines, "I've learned to hold my tongue, to question/nothing. Questions are another sort of winter."
Section Two: Its place remembers it no more. —Psalm 103
This section is a search for home, poems like "Exiled in Babylon" she writes, "Truly we shall be expats to the umpteenth generation./Truly we've tried to gain purchase in every nation to no avail." And in the poem "In Search of Home" where she names some of her trails to where she landed in the northwest. In the poem "Mean Distance from the Sun, Mid=Winter, Northern Hemisphere," which ends, "I sit at a table/27 hundred miles/from the southern tip of the Florida coase/a knife, a fork/grasped firmly in two hands/and cut myself/into pieces small enough/for a child to swallow.//Nothing is simple/Not our distance from the sun/nor my distance from my son."
Section Three: Who is my mother? And who are my brethren? Matthew 12:48
Here we have poems about her mother's death and a broken relationship, and she circles us back to faith. The poem "Faith's Cavity" she offers a methaphor, "Faith is the slight stalk cluthching/tight the baby tooth to its root." And in the poem "How to Be Sad" is this heartbreaking image, "I was nine and lonely for my mothership,/her planets and galaxies preparing me/for a life of stargazng and solitude."
Section Four: They call me and I go. —William Carolos Williams
Here she brings us visits to death. In the poem "Of Countless Deaths" she writes, "Of countless deaths today,/I witnessed two. To witness/any death is to feel desperately/alive."
Section Five: What we feel primarily is our inability to feel adequately. —Abraham Heschel
In this section we have a Buddhist prayer poem with breath and instructions. Here also is the poem "Are Your Ready?" with the brilliant lines, "...beware/of comfort, it conspires to make us/foolish and to do foolish things like fall/in love and have children. Prepare//for the ordeal of living, with its shelling/news of wars and famine, a genocide/or two each decade, and closer to home,/betrayal by one who said she loved you." In this section in the poem "In Praise of That Which Doesn't Kill" she writes, "I learn that Buddhists can be terrorists too,/monks with guns under saffron robes,/killing and exiling their particular others."
Section Six: Because it is bitter,/And because it is my heart. —Stephen Crane
Here she let's her bitterness out and there is also a short #MeToo poem (without the #metoo notice). The poem "DNA" starts with the lines, "Coupling ensnares life, a thing being no thing/lacking contact with other things." Later in the poem "About the Body and What It Needs" she writes, "You must wonder how I say these things that seem/so faded." Further down the poem, "I am no more alone than Emily Dickinson./There is no idiom for the seasonal way I sail/into myself. The clouds are blue today."
Section Seven: Whenever it will be it will be now/its own now. —C.K. Williams
In this section we visit with Leonard Cohen who left his fans for six years in the poem "On Leaving the Barn Door Open" she writes, "I've compressed my losses/by leaning on imagery and verse,/by my own version of hermitude,/by renouncing ordinary eros."
In Slight Faith we are feeling and have the great honor of a view into a life that has a lot to share on how to live as an outsider. I am honored and grateful to read such wisdom.
Section One: Faith is a fine invention. —Emily Dickinson
In the poem "Abiding Winter" she writes, "Then winter comes again and yet another,/a darkling season full of melancholy. The yanking/of my soul back to the gutter, that other//place where questions have no answers,/and answers only placate. It takes rafters/of steadfast faith, or mettle, to seek answers.//Truth is brutal. So much we can't recover,/" The poem ends brilliantly with the lines, "I've learned to hold my tongue, to question/nothing. Questions are another sort of winter."
Section Two: Its place remembers it no more. —Psalm 103
This section is a search for home, poems like "Exiled in Babylon" she writes, "Truly we shall be expats to the umpteenth generation./Truly we've tried to gain purchase in every nation to no avail." And in the poem "In Search of Home" where she names some of her trails to where she landed in the northwest. In the poem "Mean Distance from the Sun, Mid=Winter, Northern Hemisphere," which ends, "I sit at a table/27 hundred miles/from the southern tip of the Florida coase/a knife, a fork/grasped firmly in two hands/and cut myself/into pieces small enough/for a child to swallow.//Nothing is simple/Not our distance from the sun/nor my distance from my son."
Section Three: Who is my mother? And who are my brethren? Matthew 12:48
Here we have poems about her mother's death and a broken relationship, and she circles us back to faith. The poem "Faith's Cavity" she offers a methaphor, "Faith is the slight stalk cluthching/tight the baby tooth to its root." And in the poem "How to Be Sad" is this heartbreaking image, "I was nine and lonely for my mothership,/her planets and galaxies preparing me/for a life of stargazng and solitude."
Section Four: They call me and I go. —William Carolos Williams
Here she brings us visits to death. In the poem "Of Countless Deaths" she writes, "Of countless deaths today,/I witnessed two. To witness/any death is to feel desperately/alive."
Section Five: What we feel primarily is our inability to feel adequately. —Abraham Heschel
In this section we have a Buddhist prayer poem with breath and instructions. Here also is the poem "Are Your Ready?" with the brilliant lines, "...beware/of comfort, it conspires to make us/foolish and to do foolish things like fall/in love and have children. Prepare//for the ordeal of living, with its shelling/news of wars and famine, a genocide/or two each decade, and closer to home,/betrayal by one who said she loved you." In this section in the poem "In Praise of That Which Doesn't Kill" she writes, "I learn that Buddhists can be terrorists too,/monks with guns under saffron robes,/killing and exiling their particular others."
Section Six: Because it is bitter,/And because it is my heart. —Stephen Crane
Here she let's her bitterness out and there is also a short #MeToo poem (without the #metoo notice). The poem "DNA" starts with the lines, "Coupling ensnares life, a thing being no thing/lacking contact with other things." Later in the poem "About the Body and What It Needs" she writes, "You must wonder how I say these things that seem/so faded." Further down the poem, "I am no more alone than Emily Dickinson./There is no idiom for the seasonal way I sail/into myself. The clouds are blue today."
Section Seven: Whenever it will be it will be now/its own now. —C.K. Williams
In this section we visit with Leonard Cohen who left his fans for six years in the poem "On Leaving the Barn Door Open" she writes, "I've compressed my losses/by leaning on imagery and verse,/by my own version of hermitude,/by renouncing ordinary eros."
In Slight Faith we are feeling and have the great honor of a view into a life that has a lot to share on how to live as an outsider. I am honored and grateful to read such wisdom.
February 8, 2025
Denenberg plunged me into a specific, personal world with the content of this poetry collection. Some of the stories in the more narrative poems share immense pains. Remarkably, many are accompanied with humor such that I finished the book with a sense of having seen into huge sorrows but not overwhelmed with sorrow. Please, read the last poem in the book last. (I often hop around in poetry collections. I advise against doing that because of the impact of the final words.) The work has a northwest slant which I appreciate, and celebrates planetary truths as elements of beauty and sources of balance amid any of our artificial mayhem.
Sometimes I read poetry books in one gulp. Others, I'm slow--reread, abandon and return. Pause to look up words and names from epigraphs. This second, stretched experience I gave myself with Slight Faith. Readers "balance" on the edge of an avalanche, visit/witness tragedies and horrors--intimate and global, delight in living.
"My sorrow useless as a prayer"
Sometimes I read poetry books in one gulp. Others, I'm slow--reread, abandon and return. Pause to look up words and names from epigraphs. This second, stretched experience I gave myself with Slight Faith. Readers "balance" on the edge of an avalanche, visit/witness tragedies and horrors--intimate and global, delight in living.
"My sorrow useless as a prayer"
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews